Two American Kids Doin' the Best That They Can

Moving...

2012-01-27T21:25:00.002-05:00

Well, with a new year, a new life, and about to be out of debt I feel I need to start fresh with a new focus. I am not sure what that will be yet. But I would like to blog (as well as other things) more frequently, and it seems silly to keep a blog only about getting out of debt now. I am going to broaden. Still discuss finances, but not exclusively.

So, to that end, I have started a new blog:

http://life0after0debt.wordpress.com/

Happy New Year ~

2012-01-02T14:41:00.002-05:00

Here is what I hope is a 7 month recap and not 7 months worth of excuses :)

our life
The baby finally came the end of May. My son is now 7 months old, and wonderful. We had a very rough start - my delivery did not go at all as planned and I was sick and recovering for the first couple of months. He was also a very demanding baby and I spent a lot of time sitting and holding him. So not much at all got done the first few months. Now that he is napping and playing on his own more, I am working on getting life back to normal. I have been working on cleaning out the house, starting to sew again, I am trying to get a handmade business going. I've been spending a lot of time in Florida with my mom. My sister got married in September, and that took up a lot of time and planning as well. I feel very lucky our two elderly cars didn't give us trouble this year, but we are anticipating replacing a car in the not too distant future. We need a bigger car now anyway.

work

I had a meeting with work about two months in. I was still real ill and adjusting. I asked if I could go part time or work from home. My commute and pay did not make continuing to work (for them at least) continue to make sense. Additionally, the baby wakes up and stays up frequently in the night (he still does even now - I am exhausted) They told me that wouldn't work, and severed my employment with them. A couple months later, I got an email asking if I was still interested. So, I have been working part time from home. Some weeks more than others. My accounts hadn't been touched since I left, so I have been catching them up for the year. I have mixed feelings about it. I loved my job, and having some money come in is helpful. I miss really working though. I miss going into the office and all the components of my job. I am rather jealous of the girl who replaced me. It just wouldn't work though. I'd be working for daycare, and I can't imagine daycare raising my baby. Don't get me wrong - I never in a million years believed I would be a SAHM. Until I was. I never understood why people would give up their jobs to be moms. But there are lots of reasons to do so. It also doesn't mean I don't miss the socialization and accomplishment of work, either. I just can't do it all, after all.

The money

Here I wish I had kept up the blog. I think I could have used a place to sort things through and would have appreciated the recording of it. However, after April budgeting kind of went to hell. After I had the baby, everything did for a while. It was enough just to get to and from the bathroom for a while. I kept an eye on the bills but couldn't go to the bank. So we started using debit cards, and my husband signed us up for our grocery/gas credit card. We had a bunch of money sitting in our accounts that should have been put in savings. We have been going over budget and spending more freely again.

We were very lucky in that my family really provided us with most everything we needed. However, as I spent most of my days sitting on my couch holding the baby and watching game shows I also developed quite the addiction to online shopping. What else could I do one handed and sitting? Every little baby trinket or cloth diaper that appeared on a DOTD site I was buying. I didn't use a credit card, at least, but I have spent quite a bit of money earmarked for other things. I am still spending, and really that is one thing on the list for this year - get back on track. With everything - the budget and the spending. As well as try to find ways to make money.

The medical bills were far above what we had planned. I had a horribly emergency last minute C section and a lot of tests. Between me and the baby, we had about $40,000 in hospital bills. We paid oop (after insurance) $2500 in the end ($900 to an anesthesiologist I had never even planned to have!). That's 5 times what I planned on though. But it is all paid for. We had the money.

When I was going to the bank and taking out our monthly cash, we had accumulated over $3000 in cash savings funds I was keeping in my linen closet. I started having horrible nightmares about us getting robbed and killed. We finally took most of that cash and opened another savings account for short term savings. Now I just transfer the money every month.

I paid off the loan from my father on his birthday in September. All we have left is around $4000 on my student loan. We had a large "gift" for the holidays and we additionally have about $15000 in savings. I just have to sit down and think it all through but regardless, I should be debt free this month. 9 months later than originally planned. Not working has obviously slowed us down and I just have a lot harder time not having a lot of savings now with the baby. How funny when I lived most of my life with a couple hundred in the bank and thousands in debt and never thought twice about it.

Payoff: Month 16

2011-04-19T15:57:00.003-04:00

March:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 5631.85
Loan 3: 8471.92

Debt: 14103.77
Paid: 758.34

April:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 5071.85
Loan 3: 8264.50

Debt: 13336.35
Paid: 767.42
Total Paid: 30571.53

Added to savings: -5000
Total savings: ~13600

YAY! for crossing $30,000 paid (Finally)!
A word on savings: We owed $3500 in federal taxes. My husband took out $5000 to cover the taxes. We should be able to repay the difference ($1500) plus what we would otherwise be putting in savings ($1600) and our state refund ($500) for a total reconciled (but not actual as of this moment) savings of $17200. I think we will hold off on this for now incase the little guy comes early. We anticipate hospital/doctor costs of around $1000 and a savings amount of $1600 in May. Total projection for May is $17800. Our debt at that point should be roughly $12,500, allowing us to pay it off with around $5000 left over.

Payoff: Month 15

2011-04-14T12:26:00.001-04:00

February:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 6191.85
Loan 3: 8670.26

Debt: 14862.11
Paid: 760.45

March:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 5631.85
Loan 3: 8471.92

Debt: 14103.77
Paid: 758.34

Total Paid: 29804.11

Added to savings: 1600
Total savings: ~18600

Payoff: Month 14

2011-04-14T11:54:00.004-04:00

January:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 6751.85
Loan 3: 8870.71

Debt: 15622.56
Paid: 761.02

February:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 6191.85
Loan 3: 8670.26

Debt: 14862.11
Paid: 760.45

Total Paid: 29045.77

Added to savings: 1750
Total savings: ~17000

I'm here.

2011-04-14T11:43:00.004-04:00

Wow. I've gone AWOL. Just because I have become tardy with my updates, doesn't mean I am not still following my plan. I have been very preoccupied with the pregnancy. I am 36 weeks now, and feeling big and uncomfortable and sore. My feet are huge. All my free time has gone to preparing for the baby, and I don't even really have energy for that anymore. Overall the pregnancy has gone well.

I have been having a much harder time sticking to my budget. I am spending lots on the baby. I have had some monetary gifts that help with that, but all my discretionary money and I have a baby line item in the budget and I have even gone beyond that. I was doing so well watching my spending til it came to the baby. I am still doing monthly budgets and payoffs. April has been hard because our taxes are much more than we were expecting. May is hard because the baby could come at any time. So, there is some shuffling of money going on in and out of our savings. We should still be able to be debt free after the baby comes with a decent savings starter.

Something has happened at work causing the blocks to go away, so for now, I am able to update here. Which is somehow a lot easier than updating from home for some reason. I don't know when they will put the blocks back up, but I am going to take advantage while I can to try to catch up. :)

Payoff: Month 13

2011-01-23T00:46:00.002-05:00

December:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 7311.85
Loan 3: 9071.73

Debt: 16383.58
Paid: 753.08

January:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 6751.85
Loan 3: 8870.71

Debt: 15622.56
Paid: 761.02

Total Paid: 28285.32

Added to savings: 6400
Total Savings: ~15250

I realized

2011-01-23T00:17:00.003-05:00

In doing our payoff for this month, I realized we have about as much in savings right now as we have in debt. This means that had our plans not changed, we would be out of debt in February. In part this is due to a substantial holiday money gift from my mom, which may or may not have been the case if we were not bearing her grandchild, so who really knows. But we are grateful and it feels good to know this.

I am itching to pay of debts. At least one? But I am not. We anticipate a $2000 or so tax bill coming up which we will have to pay. We have to pay the hospital still. Part of my leave will be unpaid, and I am still wavering on what to do about work. But, assuming all goes well, we should be able to have everything paid off between the baby being born and me going back to work.

Thoughts as we come to the end of the year...

2010-12-30T21:30:00.003-05:00

Heh. The first one is, I made it! I haven't used the credit card for over a year. And, until maybe this month, I haven't even been tempted. Living on a budget works.... if you stick to it. We have come a long way. I am proud of what we have accomplished, though at the same time, I feel beaten up. It is hard, now especially, to stick to the budget, and I have been overspending lately.

We found out we are having a boy. Even though I wanted a girl, just knowing this suddenly made the pregnancy so much more real. I also started feeling him move in the last few weeks, and have started really showing in the last week or so (though I really just look really fat, I think). I am wanting to buy stuff for the baby and worrying about big ticket items. I have been going over budget and my account is suffering for it. BUT I drew the line at the credit card. I did spend some money that was sitting in my account for car repairs, though. And it isn't like I went crazy... I bought some clearance clothes at Target and some cloth diapers and I am making the nursery linens, so I bought fabric (which I still don't have enough of). But when you are on a tight budget, and when I really have myself focused on being able to pay a lot off this summer, it is hard to carve out even a little bit.

We have also gotten hit at work - Neither one of us got bonuses or raises. Although, my husband's job has "promised" retoractive raises and bonuses in June. He thinks this means layoffs are coming, though it is unlikely he will be laid off. In addition, our insurance premiums are skyrocketing. They are going up $150 in January and another $150 when the baby comes, so we are essentially taking a big paycut. I don't know what is up with my job. They refuse to admit we are hurting, but it is a huge deal that we got screwed in both raises and bonuses and we saw several large rounds of layoffs this year. I also feel I am terribly underpaid for what I do for them, and feel I deserve an additional raise to balance that out. I was surprised I didn't get it, and am debating at what point I need to ask for it. I just feel I am not in a bargaining position right now. That may change next fall. I really think I will be looking for another job by then, not just because of money but also because I spend 2-3 hours commuting everyday. I am having a hard time justifying that knowing I will have a baby this time next year. I keep playing with the stay at home scenario budget, but I just can't do it. Not only do I not really want to be a stay at home mom, we would be cut to nothing. I don't think it is worth it. It is worth it to find a better paying and/or closer to home job though, even though I ultimately love my job and am very comfortable there.

Making things worse, my laptop finally gave up the ghost this weekend. My husband keeps talking about getting me a new one, but I hate spending that money. All I can think about are all the other expenses we have coming up.

Looking back, I said there were three things, I think, that I wouldn't be able to do and still pay off debt:

1. Buy dolls: Well, I did. I am not entirely sure, but I think I bought three dolls this year, and minimal doll accessories. While this is certainly more than zero, it is a whole lot less than the several hundred dollars a month I was spending before. There have been many things I have had to pass on and watch retire, even though I really wanted it. There's always ebay? It did get easier once I got pregnant, though. It is a lot harder to justify these sorts of purchases knowing I need things like cribs and bottles.

2. Get a dog: Well, I did. Barely made it a few months on that one. He was expensive initially, and has been lately because I am taking him to training classes before the baby comes. But, overall, he has not been an overwhelming financial impact. I think after having such an old, sick, expensive dog for so long, I forget that the younger ones aren't generally as expensive. We have also built up a good savings fund for pet expenses. With everyone's shots coming due in the next few months, I am much more calm about handling that than I was this time last year.

3. No 5th anniversary in Hawaii: Yeah. We had to let this one go. There was no way. We did spend a nice week at my parent's beach house using money we saved for that purpose. I spent a lot of time on the beach, reading books, and getting pregnant. :) Maybe for our 10th we can do Hawaii?

4. No baby: Well, I did. Well.... I will. My arrangement with myself was that we would start trying once the credit cards were paid off, which is what we did. It took a few months to get pregnant, which allowed me to also pay off one of the loans. It did not take anywhere near as much time as I thought it would though. I thought we would be seeking medical treatments at this point, but I guess we were very lucky that it did not come to that. It does, however, throw off my 14 month to debt freedom plan, and I have had a hard time dealing with the realities of that. I hate stretching the money stuff out so much longer, and baby expenses, daycare, and maternity leave are all going to make it even longer.

So. I guess the lesson here is that even though you get on a budget, and by definition you have to sacrifice, you do not have to pass on the important things. I was still able to get some fun things - not as much as I wanted to or would have a year ago, but didn't have to give it up entirely. And the important things, like animals and babies, can still be worked in and worked around. You just have to be flexible and plan.

I think back to the first few months, when we were really getting by on nothing. When buying my book club book was my entire "fun money" allotment. When a month with five weeks cropped up and we ran out of gas and grocery money. When I had to pay vet bills with no pet fund cushion. When a leaking roof was the end of the world. When a hotel and plane for my cousin's wedding was a huge deal. I am griping about how low our sinking fund is now that we used it for it's purpose: Christmas gifts. But I am still entering January with around $300 in it, which is $300 more than I had last January! We have been through a lot, and we have come a long way, and we have been able to increase things, like gas and fun money, as things have been paid off or income increased (fat chance).

This has gotten long, so I suppose I will post my looking ahead thoughts separately.

Payoff: Month 12 & year end review

2010-12-30T21:14:00.003-05:00

November:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 7871.85
Loan 3: 9264.81

Debt: 17136.66
Paid: 769.43

December:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 7311.85
Loan 3: 9071.73

Debt: 16383.58
Paid: 753.08

Total Paid: 27524.3

Added to savings: 1600
Total Savings: ~8850

We finish out the year with 62% of our debt paid off. We have almost $9000 saved now, which would have gone on our debt as well (proving we would have wiped out at least one more loan at this point). This is an average of just under $2300 in debt repayment per month (not including our additional savings). Under the current circumstances, I cannot quite predict a projection based on this information. We will not be able to put that much per month going ahead, and I am not sure how much of our savings will be used by the time I come off maternity leave. My soft goal is to have the debts paid off by this time next year at the latest, but that will move as other things become more clear. I am confident that if we had proceeded without pregnancy, we would have met or exceeded the April 2011 goal. I don't have the actual paperwork on this with me right now, but we have also paid off around $14400 in mortgage principal this year as well. I will try to remember to check on that and update it.

December Budget

2010-12-12T22:29:00.004-05:00

Income: We expect to get Christmas money and I should get a bonus at work. So far neither has happened. These may get carried over onto January's budget.

Expenses: The ususal

Debt repayment: Minimums

Variable expenses:I added $50 for the angel tree child at work.

Funds: Our flex money has run out, so I have had to pay for some doctor visits out of pocket. I am reimbursing myself from the money we would have saved, since that is what the saved money is meant to be for anyway.

Save:only $1600 this month.

November Budget

2010-12-12T22:21:00.004-05:00

Expenses: Termite due this month. We've had some unpredictably high power bills, so I am just keeping the budget for that at 300. I figure it will all even out, as I seem incapable of telling which months will be high and which low. I guess next year I will have this year's bills to refer back to.

Debt: Continuing minimum payments to my dad and school loan.

Variable expenses: Nothing too unusual here.

Funds: Added a baby fund (And actually, I think I later upped it to $100) for buying baby stuff.

Save: Adding $1750 to savings this month.

Payoff: Month 11

2010-11-22T19:17:00.002-05:00

October:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 8431.85
Loan 3: 9474.24

Debt: 17906.09
Paid: 750.66

November:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 7871.85
Loan 3: 9264.81

Debt: 17136.66
Paid: 769.43

Total Paid: 26771.22

Added to savings: 1750
Total Savings: ~7250

As you can see from the last couple of posts, we have scaled back on our debt repayment. I am currently paying $560 to loan 2 and $250 to loan 3. Anything else which would go to these loans are going into savings. Our savings should start building quickly. I will have the OB paid in January, but I still don't know what the hospital will cost or how my maternity will work out. Once all that is taken care of, we will pay the debt again with whatever is left.

Payoff: Month 10

2010-11-22T19:12:00.002-05:00

September

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 8991.85
Loan 3: 9664.90

Debt: 18656.75
Paid: 1995.93

October:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 8431.85
Loan 3: 9474.24

Debt: 17906.09
Paid: 750.66

Total Paid: 26001.79

Added to savings: 2000
Total Savings: ~5500

September Budget

2010-10-16T22:57:00.003-04:00

September

Hi, yes, I know what month it is.

Things, as always, are crazy. My mother had major foot surgery over a month ago and I have been staying with her to help take care of her. Time at home has been intermittent and filled with laundry and not much else.

We are also slowly trying to prepare for Baby so, while I am home this weekend, we have been cleaning out the garage and the office, into which I am (hoping) going to move all the doll stuff, as the baby is going to go in the doll room. We have so much crap. I don't want to tell you how many HUGE boxes of packing peanuts I took out of my garage. Not to mention all the cardboard, aluminum and paper. By the time we got to actual boxes with actual stuff in it, we were beat and called it a day. I put the stuff on freecycle, and what isn't taken will go into recycling over the next few weeks. We had a crappy curbside recycling program until this summer, so we used to haul it ourselves. We stopped doing that regularly, and it started piling up. When our trash service got changed to one that would take these things, we were just putting out what we were actually accumulating on a weekly basis and never got to the stores of stuff in the garage.

So, anyway....

Income: as normal

Fixed Expenses: Power has been high. No Termite or insurance this month, so extra money in other areas.

Debt: Just down to the last two. Large payment to the student loan.

Variable: I finally have a clothing fund. We had our convention, so I had some money for that. Smugmug renewal. I cut the amount for our lawn boy, as we probably won't be seeing him again til spring.

Our account balances were getting low, so I set some money aside to build them back up again. Somehow, that didn't work out quite as I planned, as my account is still reconciling negative. Hoping to float til the holidays, when we should see some extra money.

Payoff: Month 9

2010-10-03T16:12:00.002-04:00

August:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 11100.83
Loan 3: 9551.85

Debt: 20652.68
Paid: 2592.48

September

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 8991.85
Loan 3: 9664.90

Debt: 18656.75
Paid: 1995.93

Total Paid: 25251.13

I think I flipped what is loan "2" and "3" again. We paid less this month in order to bring up our waning bank balances. We also had an event over labor day weekend that I budgeted money for. We have crossed 25,000 paid ! We paid off the small loan! We have two loans and less than 20,000 left! This would all be very exciting, however, with the baby on the way we will not be seeing much movement in the debt in the coming months. I will start keeping a tally of our savings now. The goal before was to have all debts paid by April (my 35th bday). Now, we will save that money instead, and should be able to pay my dad off right after the baby is born, and pay the last loan by next December, depending on costs associated with having and daycareing the baby.

This changes everything.

2010-09-06T23:15:00.003-04:00

Wondering where I've been?

Quite the surprise. This is me hoping no one I actually know reads this. It took three months. While they were happening, it was starting to feel long and tedious and like it was going to go on forever. I am sure helping that along was my belief that I was not going to be able to get pregnant on my own. It is really really early. I haven't even gotten in to a doctor yet. But the tests keep getting darker and darker, and there hasn't been any blood, so I am cautiously optimistic.

Even though we had been trying for a few months, this is really the first month I was comfortable with it happening, as we are past the halfway point and have only the two debts left. Each month it took meant more debt paid off. I've been recalculating and I think we can still be debt free by the end of 2011. That is really hard for me, since we were making such progress, and it is scary adding this new, expensive, person, so late in life, with no safety nets or fabulous retirement accounts. All I can do is hope that we know enough now to make good choices and let everyone else buy us the expensive stuff :) and give up our toys. Priorities change.

We are going to finish out the month on paper as it is (with a big payment to the student loan), but I am afraid after that the debt repayment is going to stagnante for a while. We will start building up our emergency and hospital fund instead. Hopefully after the baby comes, we can make a large lump sum payment to one of the loans.

No one knows. It is really hard keeping my mouth shut.

Payoff: Month 8

2010-08-24T21:03:00.005-04:00

July

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 1961.64
Loan 2: 10111.85
Loan 3: 11171.67

Debt:23245.16
Paid: 2399.61

August:

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 0
Loan 2: 11100.83
Loan 3: 9551.85

Debt: 20652.68
Paid: 2592.48

Total Paid: 23255.20

All credit cards are done. We paid off the small student loan. I readjusted the loan to my dad back to the full length payoff amount. Will readjust when we know better when it will be paid. Excited to start hitting the student loan hard. Passed the halfway mark!! Just shy of the $20,000 mark.

August Budget

2010-08-21T22:41:00.004-04:00

Revenue:

I had an extra paycheck this month.

Fixed Expenses:

I was being ridiculously optimistic about power. Termite due this month.

Debt Repayment:

Pay off Student loan #1! Minimum payments to #2 and my dad.

Variable Expenses:

I gave us raises on our personal amounts this month. I put in a clothing budget (finally!!). I am desperate for new underwear. My panties all have holes and are unravelling. My underwire has popped out of my bra and is giving my bruises in my arm. Also, as we approach fall and winter, I desperately need work appropriate winter clothes. I wore the same four sweaters from November - March last year.

Funds:

Lowered our repair amount to help cover our trip and the clothing. I wanted to put all of my extra paycheck into savings, but gave some of it to cover other things.

Trip Summary

2010-08-16T23:14:00.002-04:00

Back from our trip.

While we didn't meet the individual budget goals, we came out under overall.

There was $415 in the travel fund in August. We added $100 of the August grocery money to that. I budgeted that money as above for gas, groceries, eating out, and a buffer.

Our stay was free, as it is a family home. We had to clean the place before we left and do some minor repairs and checking while there. We did spend some of our money (grocery) on these tasks. We only ate out once, at my favorite restaurant. Other spending in the restaurant category was for food on the road to and from. I grossly overestimated the gas spending. I think the last time I drove down there was when the gas prices were really high, and I was going off what I remembered spending that time. I also expected us to putter around more while there and need a fillup during the week. We only had to fill up at the beginning and midway each way, for under $50 each direction. I had to mail some packages while there, and that is my "other" expense. (Most of these are rounded up, by the way).

The big hit was groceries. I was shocked at the prices there, and almost no sales. We had to shop Publix, and it was freaking expensive, and like I said, no good sales. I think all the prices were inflated. Even with coupons, it was painful. Later in the week we went out to Walmart (which is much further away) but the deals there were so much better.

We still came in under budget, though I do feel I was a bit of a tightwad about it, but I don't think we suffered for it. We aren't big eater-outters anyway. $74 back into the travel jar.

Plugging others~

2010-08-08T00:07:00.003-04:00

This is a fellow blogger on a TTC message board I am on. She is giving away a care package including a really cool cup and some ic's. She also makes beautiful graphics. Check her out.

In related news.... We are on our 5th anniversary (non-Hawaiian) trip. I am relaxing and enjoying some time away from work drama. I love my job, but there is some petty juvenile I'm-not-your-friend stuff going on that is wearing on me, so I am glad to be away. Additionally, I should be ovulating next week, so I am hoping to give this my undivided attention this month. It would be really cool to come back with a little anniversary souvenir. I hope the stress free relaxation and copious free time will be good for our mission.

I have all my budget stuff with me. I do not have a scanner here, so posting will have to wait til I get back. We have our August budget and also a trip budget for our trip. I am going to work on the June income statement (which is mostly done) and have that ready to post when I get home. By then I should have what I need to do July too. We will be paying off the little student loan next week, so I am in a really good place with getting pregnant now. The last two loans are going to take a while, but will be doable even if we do get pregnant at this point.

Payoff: Month 7

2010-07-25T12:23:00.002-04:00

June:

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 1702.95

Loan 1: 3960.03
Loan 2: 10413.44
Loan 3: 11271.30

Debt: 27347.72
Paid: 2941.27

July

cc 1,2,3,4,5: 0

Loan 1: 1961.64
Loan 2: 10111.85
Loan 3: 11171.67

Debt:23245.16
Paid: 2399.61

Total Paid: 20662.72

Yay no credit cards!! My husband made the comment when he got his statement that he didn't think he had ever seen a 0 interest amount on a statement. We also crossed the $20,000 debt paid mark and are a couple thousand from the halfway mark. On the one hand, that makes it feel much more doable, but it still seems really daunting. Is it possible that the first half is easier than the second half? Maybe because the two debts left are so large and we aren't going to see as fast results. The little loan will be paid off in a couple of weeks. I think I have recommitted to paying the student loan before my dad, which means we won't see another payoff til February, at the earliest. I also readjusted the amount due to my dad to reflect this change.

Mid month check in

2010-07-16T21:20:00.004-04:00

Lots of things going on in my life, wrapped with crappy access to the web from work and little time for updates from home.

The first thing is that I got a small raise this week. This is exciting because I did not think I was eligible for a raise this year. However, the whopping $40 isn't going to make a huge life change like my husband's raise did. At this rate, I will be back to my teaching wage in 14 years.

Work is keeping us super busy. There have been a lot of layoffs, and as a precausionary measure, my boss has started giving us all extra work to do from other departments to make us more integrated, invaluable and necessary. I don't believe any of our positions were at risk in the first place, but I appreciate the concern. I love having work. The problem is we all feel overly swamped now. And all the new stuff seems to be WE NEED THIS DONE RIGHT NOW!!! So my normal duties seem to be shoved to the side. I am a couple months behind on some bank recs because I just haven't had time to look at them. I want to ask who was doing all this super important need it now stuff, but it seems the answer is nobody, and that is the problem.

Today they informed me that I am going to start doing payroll for some of the employees. Uh... isn't that HR? Don't get me wrong, I am actually excited to do this, it just seems really random to me. We have two HR people. People have been getting their paychecks. So why does HR suddenly need to move this off their sholders? I hadn't noticed them seeming that swamped til recently (but our number of employees is going down?) but like, I'm not. Well, as I have been here now for 9 months and still haven't had a 30 day review, I take all this as good signs, at least.

On the home front, my husband and I are offically TTC (trying to conceive, for the non-baby minded). This is our second month, and I am in the "I don't know one way or the other" part of the cycle. Being the control freak I am, I have taken a very scientific approach to it all. I am charting, temping, taking ovulation tests, and a lot of other stuff you don't want to know about. Getting pregnant is not as easy as young virgins are led to believe, it turns out. And, it isn't cheap either. I have bought: a miracle baby making lube which my husband turned out to be "allergic" to, ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, a fertility bracelet, a thermometer, a subscription to a charting website (it has a cool iphone app! There really IS an app for everything!), all kinds of vitamins and medications, I have also heard geritol or robitussin work, but haven't tried those yet. Yeah....

I also have 16 million spread sheets going based on when or if we get pregnant. I am really praying we can do this on our own. And trying not to worry about that part too much yet. I am giving it til January. So I am rethinking our payoff schedule. As we are paying off the little student loan in a month, I have to know now which of the two big loans we are going to attack first. Initially, it was going to be the student loan, because that was smaller. But the payoff to my dad is bigger, so that one is smaller now. Plus, I really wanted to have him paid off. However, if we do get pregnant, our debt repayment is going to grind to a halt. We are going to have to save up til the baby comes, and after it is here, most of that money will pay for daycare and baby expenses. (This is why I really wanted to be debt free first). I feel like I want to try to pay off the student loan in this case, because if we get in a bind or have a baby, my dad is going to be a lot more understanding and forgiving than Direct Loans.

May Income Statement

2010-07-05T14:04:00.003-04:00

I really have to say, at this point, after doing this for a few months, that I really don't understand how we keep having such large net incomes. It isn't like we are gaining $2000 a month. I suppose it is from our bank balances, but even those aren't really that high. We each maintain about $350 in our accounts throughout the month. Maybe it is because we get paid at the end of the month, and haven't spent that money on bills yet when the statements are mailed? It does make sense that the end amount is $400 less than the beginning balances, because I think I got paid an extra $400 at the end of April, which we saved to pay for our hotel in May. I don't know... I just don't want to give the false impression that we are rolling in dough or that we aren't busting our budget every month, which we usually are.

Extra revenue: Birthday money

Expenses:
Yay low power! We over paid cable last month, so it is a little under this month. Termite due this month. I think netflix was double paid last month, or else I just missed it on my statement.

Debt:
Standard stuff here.

Variable:
Restaurant was high because we were out of town and had a couple of unplanned lunches. Most of our meals during the trip were covered by one relative or another. Supplies were high ... I have gotten into CVS ing. Unfortunately, some trips I get out of there for under $1, some are more like $20.

Additional expenses:
I spent almost $200 making my cousin's programs for her wedding, but my aunt offered later to reimburse me for that, which was great! That will show up in July, I think. The rest of the expenses for the wedding included our hotel, parking at the airport, and some last minute outfit additions.

Fund activity:
I have been struggling with how to handle planned expenses in the budget. I keep a separate spreadsheet with the tallies for our funds. Most things I just leave off altogether, like the boy who cuts our lawn, or our cleaning people (which my mom paid for as our Christmas gift). But I feel that I need to keep a true account of our expenses, and I also want to celebrate the fact that we actually were prepared for some things. The money isn't technically coming out of our monthly income, it is coming from our savings funds for that purpose. So, I have added "fund activity" at the bottom of the IS.

This month we took from two funds: I show the balance of the fund, the amount removed, and the new balance.

From repairs, we paid for our roof repair (YAY!) and also 2 new tires for my husband's car, since one was completely flat. From pet, we paid for my dog's boarding for our trip, which somehow tripled in planned amount, because he also had a checkup and some medicine added on.

July Budget

2010-07-04T01:23:00.003-04:00

Happy 4th!

Income: Standard

Fixed Expenses:

My husband's life insurance is due this month. I think that is the only unusual item here.

Debt:

We have paid off all the credit cards at this point, though some bills are still being charged to the last credit card. For now, We will just continue to pay off that card, but not use it otherwise. We are now working on the little student loan, which should be paid off in August.

Variable:

The main change here is that I upped our discretionary spending. As I have said before, after months of no fun spending and not getting items we want I feel we can finally loosen up now that the credit cards are paid off. Unfortunately, because the high insurance bills are due this month, it meant some of the funds had to be lowered as well.

A note on the June cash jars:

We spent everything this month, and then some. We have very few receipts to show for it. I am not even going to bother with this this month. We had $1 left over, which I am just throwing in for this month. Every month I say we are going to be better about this, and then things get crazy, life happens and we just aren't, and I end up pulling my hair out at the end of the month.

Payoff: Month 6

2010-06-23T20:36:00.002-04:00

May

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 3514.67

Loan 1: 4454.32
Loan 2: 10972.64
Loan 3: 11347.35

Debt: 30288.99
Paid: 3197.36

June:

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 1702.95 *

Loan 1: 3960.03
Loan 2: 10413.44
Loan 3: 11271.30

Debt: 27347.72
Paid: 2941.27

Total Paid: 16560.16

We have paid off more than 15,000 now and have our total debt under $30000.

*While our credit card is actually paid off at this point, we won't get the statement which says so until July. This was the payoff amount on the statement in June.

Hit our first goal

2010-06-19T22:51:00.003-04:00

We paid off our last credit card this week after payday.

Tonight, we took my family out to dinner on us. We toased Dave Ramsey, and I wore my Dave Ramsey shirt.

I paid for everyone, and I paid in cash.

My parents pay for so many meals and trips for us, it felt good to make a token reciprocation, and it was nice to go out for a bit and have a good time.

Now back to the grind... Looking ahead, we will pay off the little student loan in August, and then the rest will be more gruelling.

The credit cards were the important part for me, though.

This is gonna be one of those posts...

2010-06-04T23:02:00.002-04:00

I did something bad, and now I am panicking about it. It is gonna be ok. It isn't That bad. I am just beating myself up for it.

Several years ago, I was in an ebay bidding war for an OOAK doll. While I have seen many dolls by this artist (and later did get another one), this is the most beautiful one I have seen. Even though the artist usually sells her dolls for around $400, this one ended up going for around $90. I dropped out, but if I had upped my bid one more time, I would have won. I know this because as it turned out, I knew the woman who won her. She said she had also entered her last bid and walked away, as had I (I was going out) and hers was just a bit higher than mine. I have kicked myself over that for years, but took comfort in knowing where the doll ended up.

Over the years, this woman seems to have lost interest in dolls. I don't know what the deal is exactly, but she fell out of the American Girl community, and sold off a lot of that collection. She got big into Ellowyne (which is what these dolls are) and worked so much with this Ellowyne artist that she even helped to design a line of clothing with her for them. She has become close friends with her. But, she slowly over the years sold off her Ellowynes as well. She got heavy into BJDs for a while, and sold those off too. I don't understand the part where you invest heavily in these collections, lose interest, and sell. I have a very hard time selling my collections.

Anyway, she had three Ellowynes left, and the doll I had wanted was one of them. She posted them all for sale a couple weeks ago. I inquired, and she remembered that I had been bidding on this doll. She wanted $200!! I had hoped that since she got a deal on the doll, she wouldn't be pricing her so high! I told her I couldn't afford that, and she told me she would let me know if she didn't sell.

Tonight, she emailed me to tell me she was about to list her on Ebay for $150 and would I like her for $140 (+shipping, it turns out)? I have $60 in my personal spending account. But of course, there are several things I want to buy. Including clearance Ellowyne things from the company. I went back and forth on it. I can't believe she didn't sell (The other two did) and I feel like she is meant to be mine. I told her I would take her. I guess I have to start rooting around for things to sell now too.

It is very very hard living on so tight a budget. This is exactly why I planned to give us another "raise" next month. It's like dieting. You can't completely deprive yourself for such long periods of time. We don't go out, we can't buy fun things... and every little thing we have to do is a stress about the cost and the budget. It's been 6 months of this. I believe you need to let up on the reigns from time to time. It is just hard to do when I want so badly to achieve my big goal. And when things like this happen which are once-in-a-lifetime, it is hard to pass up. It is not the end of the world, or even the end of the money. It just isn't wise use of money, and it means putting off other things I was planning to get. Again. And so I beat myself up.

We will be paying off the last credit card in 10 days. We are really psyched about that. I spent some time today "what-if"ing a best case scenerio on a baby, and it really throws off everything. It is shocking how much a baby (specifically daycare) is going to slow us down. I don't know how poor people do it. But - all fodder for a different post. The point is, things happen, life happens, and I guess you have to roll with it. I feel like if we aren't going to be debt free by April, the credit cards are the important part to me, and does it really matter beyond that?

I guess even in the face of accomplishing my first goal, I am having a rough time right now. I need to feel some success at something. I am scared. Of every possible outcome.

June's Budget

2010-06-01T19:09:00.004-04:00

HAHA! Look at that! The budget up on the first day of the month! I do want to point out that I have the budgets done ... usually two months ahead of time *blush* they get tweaked a bit as time gets closer. So, its not that I am not doing them... It is that I am not getting them posted in a timely manner. Part of it is that a lot is going on at home. I have been working out after work so I get home late, and pretty much eat dinner and go to bed. The weekends have been crazy. Work no longer allows me to access blogs of any kind. And, as we got closer to the wedding, the less time I had for blogging. I am committed both to doing and posting, so it will get done. I just wish I could still do blogs from work.

Revenue

No surprises.

Fixed

My insurance installment is due again already. That surprised me. I thought I had til July. So, that took some reworking to fit that in. Power is going down, and I am really trying not to blast the AC til it gets brutally hot. Our trash may or may not be due. It normally would, so I put it in the budget, but they are saying they are going to change the trash system in our county so that it comes out of our property taxes. The bonus, though, is that there will be a ton more curbside recycling which will be amazing. So. I am hoping that is the case. But then I am not sure what, if anything, the trash bill will look like this month.

Debt

WE WILL PAY OFF THE LAST CREDIT CARD THIS MONTH!!!!!!!!!
That was my first and most important goal. I am so excited. And the first student loan should fall two months later in August, so this is really going to be an exciting few months coming up.

Variable

Expenses:

I have set aside extra money for an outing to celebrate being credit card debt free. I feel like everyone carries me a lot - We always get our dinners and stuff paid for by my family, because they know we can't/won't be able to participate in family events otherwise. It may just be a token, but I want to take them all out for dinner and drinks on me at my favorite restaurant when we pay off the credit cards. I believe we deserve a paid for in cash celebration! And it is important to me to make an effort to pay them back and a display of how responsible we are getting and turning our life around.

Funds:

Our lawn boy upped his rates this summer, and we have already burned through all the money we had saved up for him! So, I have to cash flow him. I lowered the travel and repairs funds to help cover some of the other higher expenses this month.

Don't worry too much about the notes on the side. For the most part, my fund jars were all off. I had too much in some, and not enough in others, and the bank accounts were running low because we were just paying with the debit card instead of with the cash we had set aside. So, I resorted all the money in the jars to match what should be in them, and didn't pull that money from the bank accounts in order to repay them what they were owed. Sort of. They are still going to be low, but not as.

April Income Statement

2010-06-01T18:43:00.003-04:00

April Income Statement

Revenue:

I got an extra week's paycheck at the end of the month, which was actually brought forward to pay for the hotel in May. My inlaws paid my husband back for his expenses to travel there.

Fixed Expenses:

Power is finally going down a little bit. We couldn't find the cable bill, and even though we pay the same amount every month, my husband overpaid on purpose. Insurance is super high because we got charged 3 installments on our auto insurance and my husband and I both got life insurance. I had thought we would be charged monthly for that, but we were charged quarterly.

Debt:

We paid the planned $2000 to the last credit card, as well as the $800 for the travel expenses which were put on the card.

Variable:

We were able to include a travel fund again. The pet amount includes the $150 for the fund as well as $200 spent at the vet on the dog for his shots and grooming. We forgot to take cash. I sorted all the funds out in May. I keep a separate spreadsheet with their ins and outs and actual totals. Supplies was high this month. We did some work on our basement, which required some supplies and I needed some supplies for other projects. Bank fee was the finance charge on the credit card. My husband's discretionary was super high. He got his WOW renewed for 6 months. He also cancelled a subscription, but in the process had to pay for several issues at once. Or something.

Savings:

Not surprisingly, we had nothing for the sinking fund this month. $900 in the bank account was earmarked for repairs.

April special circumstances:

A couple of my husband's charges from his parents carried over onto the April statement. We owed $2000 to the federal taxes. We moved money out of savings to pay for that. Then we got $874 back from the state. I want to pay back the $2000 to savings, but as of yet we have not. I have really just been holding my breath to get through May, but now will look at that.

May Budget

2010-05-31T23:26:00.003-04:00

...better late than never? I am glad this month is over, that's all I can say.

Revenue: Includes my husband's raise, and my extra week paycheck for this quarter.

Fixed: Termite bill due.

Debt repay: Typical amounts all around.

Variable: I have split this section up into the categories we are actually spending each month and the categories we are funding, and may or may not actually be spending. It makes it easier for me to read, plan, and analyze.

We gave ourselves a small raise in our discretionary spending. This is financed by my husband's raise, but also well deserved after a full quarter of really having no spending money, and making good debt progress. As I have started to work out more, I had wanted to buy new sneakers, but that money ended up buying mother's day flowers :/ The rest of the expenses are the same as any month.

For the funds, my husband's raise allowed us to add a car fund category. My hope is that this will build toward a new car when needed, but may end up going to car repairs if necessary. All of my extra paycheck this month was earmarked for our wedding expenses, including our stay and parking.

Payoff: Month 5

2010-05-25T21:29:00.002-04:00

April

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 6105.14

Loan 1: 4542.19
Loan 2: 11437.74
Loan 3: 11401.28

Debt: 33486.35

May

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 3514.67

Loan 1: 4454.32
Loan 2: 10972.64
Loan 3: 11347.35

Debt: 30288.99
Paid: 3197.36

Total Paid: 13618.89

My doll arrived today!

2010-05-14T23:04:00.003-04:00

I have waited almost 6 months for this doll to arrive. He is one of the catalysts which started this whole journey. He is paid for. And he is finally here. I may as well enjoy and share him, yeah? :)

(He doesn't stand real well on his own)

UGH

2010-05-11T21:25:00.003-04:00

Work has blocked blogger. This is new this week. I cannot post or read any bloggers from work anymore. How annoying.

We got our roof fixed. I don't have to worry about that anymore. It is done. I am glad. Onto the next thing.

My cousin called me up last minute and asked me to make wedding programs for her. At first I was going to say no (mostly for the time crunch), but I ended up saying yes. I have already spent maybe $75 on supplies, and I have run out of ink so I need to buy more. This is money I hadn't planned on spending. This is going to have to be her gift. Tight month gets tighter. We leave next week.

We are on track to pay off the credit cards mid June.

Coupons

2010-05-04T22:20:00.002-04:00

In trying to eek out everything I can, I have started researching coupons. I already feel overwhelmed by the number of coupons I have accumulated in just two weeks. My husband got very defensive when I started pushing the issue. I guess he took it personally. He has done a great job cutting our shopping costs, but I just feel it can go lower. He insists price-coupon is equivalent to store brand price. So now I am taking over the shopping. The problem is that I don't do the cooking, and I don't get home til 7 on a good day. So when am I fitting this in? He works from home, so he could always run out at lunch or after work.

It seems hard to plan everything out and spend as little as possible and match coupons to sales and know when to buy and when to wait and do without. I have also started working a drug store. I have never shopped at drug stores before. I did my first trip today:

Aleve $5.00 (save .80)
Colgate $2.99 (save .90)
Gillette Razor 9.79 (save .20)
Depends 6.99
Dawn .97 (save 1.02)
2 Nivea lipgloss 2@2.99
3 Nivea body wash 2@4.88 and 1@6.99 for some reason. They all said 4.88 under them. I didn't notice this til just now.
GBT .99

49.46 b4 tax

Coupons:

Dawn .50
Colgate .75
Aleve 1.00
Nivea lipgloss 1.00
razor 2.00
depends 2.00
lipgloss BOGO 2.99
Bodywash 4.00
bodywash 4.00
bodywash BOGO 4.88

Total: 30.86

Saved: 28.26

EB Offers:

Nivea $5
Gilette $6
Aleve $3
Depends $6.99
Colgate $2

Total: 22.99

Difference: 7.87

Not bad, and now I have all those bucks to float my future trips. One does tend to wonder how much stuff you don't need is worth buying just to have good rewards. I can at least use all of this (except the depends, which I will take to my grandmother's alzheimer's home this weekend), even if I wasn't actively looking to buy any of it. I am set for body wash for a while.

Anyway, I am going to start linking up websites I have found to be helpful, and hopefully start making dents with coupons.

April cash jars

2010-05-02T00:30:00.003-04:00

Not a great month in the sinking fund front. We spent a good bit of a weekend cleaning out our basement, and had to get a lot of supplies for that. We had a few expensive grocery trips. I had a work outing. I had a friend obligaion in which I spent a lot of money. We got pizza once. My diet is causing us to cut back on the takeout, but I spent the rest of that money covering shortages in other areas. Lots of schlepping around this month, so I was desperate for gas. I am also doing most of the driving because my husband's tire is flat.

Jar~~~~Spent~~~~Left
Grocery~~388~~~~~~12
Supplies~~71~~~~~~~ -21
Misc~~~~40~~~~~~~~10
Takeout~~50~~~~~~~10
Gas~~~~~125~~~~~~~0

We had $10 left in the end. But I used that money to help cover one of the jars for May. So we ultimately had nothing left for the sinking fund. The upside is I am getting better at giving us just what we need. The downside is less for whatever we are saving it for.

March Income Statement

2010-05-01T12:06:00.006-04:00

March:

Income: Standard.

Fixed: Power is still high. Trash bill this month. My husband says they are redoing the trash system here so that it will be included in property tax and will also pick up more recyclables, which will be fabulous. They tried this last year, and it failed, so we are hoping it passes this year. Water was high. We have some plumbing problems we haven't addressed yet, and some leaky toilets. But, it's only like $5 more than usual... Our insurance (car) was crazy low this month. With all the roof stuff, my husband also spoke with them about some discounts he thought we should be getting, and reduced our price. I guess they were crediting us back or something? I really don't know.

A note on Bally's: I have started going back. I am trying hard to lose weight (for the wedding, and pre-baby) and am working out 4 days a week now. 2 at Bally and 2 at the gym at work. I'd like to also do wii fit on the weekends, but haven't gotten to do that yet. It's been pretty busy. I have lost 4 pounds so far. So, I am keeping Bally's for now.

Debt: Paid off my credit card. I now own a lot of veterinary work and all my dollstuffs and my transmission. Only $1000 to cc5, to allow for us to save for the roof repair. Minimums all around.

Variable: My car renewal was due. Two cats got shots. The repair is for the power guy who came out when my house lost power. I spent some extra money going out with work and friends this month. Bank fees are finance charges, as usual. Our Misc. was high this month, too, and I don't remember why now. (my book is downstairs)

Saving: $59 to sinking fund. $900 for the roof.

Highly unusual expenses which get their own category this month: My husband spent money to be with and help out his parents. They paid him back for this (but not until April). I bought and mailed invitations for my cousin's rehearsal dinner, which I had budgeted money for. I also bought shoes for my dress.

And, we still made it out with $20 to spare.

Payoff Month 4

2010-04-23T14:55:00.004-04:00

March:

cc1,2,3,4: 0

cc5: 6048.51

Loan1: 4637.26

Loan 2: 11477.91

Loan 3: 12351.85

Debt: 34515.53

Paid last month: 1424.72

April

cc 1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 6105.14 *

Loan 1: 4542.19
Loan 2: 11437.74
Loan 3: 11401.28 **

Debt: 33486.35
Paid: 1085.81

Total Paid: 10421.53

* Yeah, I know that is higher this month. Here's the deal. When my husband went to take care of his parents, he had to buy them a lot of stuff and run a lot of errands for them, plus buy the plane ticket. He used his credit card. His dad has since paid him back, but that isn't going to show up until the next statement. So, while that is a false total, it is what it is, and I am dealing with printed statement totals. About half of that should be gone next month.

** This is the loan to my father. I have done some reworking and decided to pay this off before my other student loan. Doing so not only allows me to hit my student loan fast and hard (because my payment to my dad is higher) but also allows me to pay my dad off by the end of the year, which is really appealing. The total owed changes, then, because I will owe less interest to him in the end, so this is lower than it was for those reasons.

So, while not a great month in the payoff department, we did surpass $10,000 paid, we are still on track for our payoff dates, and we should show some big losses in next month's report.

Mid month update

2010-04-15T15:25:00.005-04:00

Happy tax day!

We had to pay $2000. But we are also getting $800 back from the state. Had to dip into savings for this. I think this has something to do with our mortgage set up right now. If'n we refi soon, maybe it will straighten itself out. I have tabled the refi for now.

We have had an estimate for our roof, and another one coming next week. They think it was a bullet! I forget exactly, but it was around $850. The people coming next week can also do our siding repair (which is probably from settling), so I am waiting to see what that looks like. We have about $1000 saved for this, and I want it done already.

Counting down to my cousin's wedding. I get an extra paycheck this month, which should cover the hotel. We also have $200 in the travel fund, and the $400 in the sinking fund to cover any other expenses. I don't expect many, but we will have parking and miscellaneous spending. I still need to get a gift, too.

My husband needs new tires. Like, one if his tires is literally completely flat. I still haven't worked out how we are going to pay for this.

The good news is, my husband's boss called him last week and gave him a promotion and an 8% raise. It seems to amount to about $360 more take home a month. It was shocking how quickly I found places for that money to go. I had so many things I wanted to fund, and hadn't yet, that the whole thing is not going to debt repayment, as I might like. Starting in May, We will begin a car fund. Both our cars are old, and I am holding my breath that they will both make it another year (let alone long enough to save for another one). My husband's car is ten years old and has over 150,000 miles. I gave us each a raise in our personal money. I think we deserve it. We have had very little fun money. Now we are up to an amount we can actually use for something we want. I doubled what we are saving for our lawn boy - both because we are going to start needing him again, and because I expect his rates to increase again this year. The rest seems to be ironing out things that were getting ignored in the budget, such as the bills being charged on our cards and the quarterly bills. It doesn't last long. But it is good to have. I am just disappointed, because somehow I thought we could get our debt repayment up to 2900 a month, but I guess that was not a realistic figure. I was not accounting for things properly.

I am also struggling with the fact that I am "saving" about $500 a month into these funds. I could pay things off faster if I didn't. But I feel better knowing that we are building money towards these things, should they happen. Our travel and pet funds are about to take another hit. The repairs we have are outpacing what I am saving for them by far. I have decided to put caps on some of these things. If I manage to hit the cap, then I can cut back the saving there until I have to use the money.

April Budget

2010-04-08T18:53:00.004-04:00

April Budget

Fixed

I anticipate a drop in power this month. We have taken out life insurance, so I expected to pay about an additional $60 in the insurance category a month, starting in April.

Debt

Cards 1-4 are paid off, so we are pounding on my husband's credit card now.

Variable

I can finally start my travel fund. Continuing the repair fund. Everything else appears to be the same as any other month.

Short and sweet :)

March budget

2010-04-08T18:36:00.004-04:00

Here is my March budget. I couldn't find the one I printed out in February, and I think I messed with the spreadsheet a lot since then, but this is still pretty close to our plan.

Fixed

I was still anticipating a high power bill. Lower cable. I added the server back in - They were offering us half what we were paying before and we were having a lot of trouble with reliable connection from home, so we were considering going back. As of this writing, we still have not, but I have it in there just in case. Our trash bill was due this month. I took out some of the other quarterly expenses because it was just confusing me. Both on the budget and the bank account. I know you are supposed to save the month's portion each month, but it is just not working for me, so I am going to try to just recognize the bill when it comes due. I also removed the bills which are charged to my husband's card, because now we are just paying on that card, and I don't really have to account for the extra to keep the balance even. I will either add those back in when his card is paid off or encourage him to have them taken from the bank account instead.

Debt

I struggled with this a lot. I had wanted to pay my credit card off in Feb and then put $2000 to my husband's card. We would have had it paid off in May then. With the various crises that arose, I felt it more prudent to hold some money back for a couple months to help pay for stuff. So, we planned to pay off my credit card in March and only $1000 to my husband's. Minimums on all else.

Variables

My car came due, so I had to pay my taxes and emissions. I was so aware of it because of the budget, I think this is the first year ever I had it done weeks ahead of time. Two of our cats were due for shots, so I upped our pet allotment to cover that. I added a new fund for repairs, with the $400 held back from debt for the month (plus the $500 from last month).

February income statement

2010-04-07T19:55:00.006-04:00

February income statement

Revenue

I got an extra week's pay in one of my paychecks. My husband deposited some birthday money. I believe some of the bank balance is for our March mortgage, but I am not quite sure. It just seems high to me.

Fixed

Power was super high. Just look at that. Ugh. We had some snow and some very cold days. We are finally seeing the lowered cable price, though that does include a partial refund for the month, so future cable should be around $80. I still think that is super high for the basic stuff. We had our termite bill for the quarter.

Debt repayment

Just when I thought #2 was paid, it hit me with a $5 interest charge from the previous month. I now have that paid off again. I own my carpet (#3). We paid off most of cc#4 which is my main card. I was going to pay the whole thing, but then the fiasco with the roof, and I opted to save some money for that instead. That was a very hard decision to make. Minimums to all else.

Variable

Most of these are discussed in the cash jar post. Some highlights: Pet. Is very high, because we adopted our dog, and purchased items for him. This figure includes the money we also still set aside for the pet jar. The only thing I can say for myself, is I did that all with cash. Mostly money from my extra paycheck that month. We bought our convention tickets for this summer, so that is set. Bank fees are finance charges. Other than the dog, we really stuck to (or below) our budget for this month.

Savings

We added $120 to the sinking fund from the cash jars for the month. We saved $500 towards our roof repair, instead of paying off a credit card.

Looking back, I am not sure I calculated the bank balances properly, and we way overspent on the pet category (and power!) but we came out positive and did really well overall, I think.

March cash jars and memoriam

2010-04-03T17:39:00.005-04:00

March was hard. That may have something to do with my lack of updates this month. Again, I hope to get everything caught up in the next few days. We don't have a lot of money left over, and it is actually more than I initially thought. I think in part, the fact that it was a five week month made it hard to get through. We also had some "lost" money, where we pulled money from whatever jar had it and we now don't know where it went.

The month started with my husband getting his crowns. Luckily, we were able to use our health flex card to pay for those. So, we don't feel the hit from that, but it used the most of our health allocation for the year.

Two of our cats got their shots. My husband forgot to get cash from the jar for that, so he used the debit card. He also spent more than I was expecting.

Then my husband flew off to Texas to take care of his family for two weeks. His mom came through her lung surgery and the biopsy said it isn't cancer.

We had someone out to look at our roof. The roof of the house is in good shape, but the porch roof needs to be replaced. The insurance won't cover it, but it will probably cost less than the deductible anyway.

Our house lost partial power last week while I was here on my own. I was freaking out, imagining walls getting knocked out and rewiring and cost and everything. I had an electrician out, and had to pay $120 for that. He determined it was a problem for the power company. They came right out, dug up my front yard, and did something to cause the power to come back, and I didn't have to pay anything further.

This was a "make it work" month.

Jar~~~~~Used~~~~~Left
Gas~~~~~~125~~~~~~~~0
Grocery~~~378~~~~~~~~20
Take out~~60~~~~~~~~~0
Misc~~~~~47~~~~~~~~~3
Supplies~~24~~~~~~~~~26
Unknown~~~~~~~~~~~~10

Add to sinking: 59

Month 3: Statement totals

2010-03-26T16:47:00.004-04:00

Ugh. I know I am behind. This month ate my head. It was (and continues to be) a long and hard month. I hope to get everything up this weekend.

March Payoff:

February:

cc1,2,3: 0
cc4: 644.17
cc5: 6070

Loan 1: 4730.83
Loan 2: 11604.46
Loan 3: 12911.85

Debt: 35961.30
Paid: 4211.39

March:

cc1,2,3,4: 0
cc5: 6048.51

Loan 1: 4637.26
Loan 2: 11477.91
Loan 3: 12351.85

Debt: 34515.53
Paid: 1424.72

Total paid: 9335.72

Flu and roof

2010-03-03T21:59:00.003-05:00

I have the flu. This sucks. I have to take several days off work. I don't want to waste time off on being sick!! I have fever and aches and insane coughing. Not sleeping well. My mom keeps yelling at me because she thinks my doctor is wrong, so no sympathy there. My husband says he is getting sick, now, too, so no help there either. Stealing my thunder.

The roof insurance adjuster came out today. He says that other than our porch which is rotten, the roof is actually in remarkably good shape. The flashing is missing on that pipe, but that is an easy fix. He found a couple of spots where the shingles are coming up. The good news is that this is probably going to be a $500-1000 fix (the porch and the damage in the bedroom ceiling) instead of $4000. We also have an area that is worrying me- where siding is pulling away from the house and there is a noticable gap. I don't know if that is something the same person who fixes the roof can do.

February cash jars

2010-03-01T12:35:00.003-05:00

We did not cut it as close in February as I thought we would. It seems like we want to spend a lot of money the first weekend of the month, but then can hold off the rest of the month.

Miscellaneous: I got a haircut and waxed my eyebrows. I mailed some stuff at the post office. Last weekend we did a gaming event which was $5 entry fee each.

Takeout: We got pizza once and Chinese once.

Supplies: I am shocked that the only thing we got out of supplies this month was a lamp for my office, which I have been meaning to get for months. As I haven't been feeling well the last couple weeks, it has gotten a lot of use.

Gas: I got gas 4 times, my husband didn't get any.

Grocery: 4 trips, plus a rather cheap trip to Costco. We still had leftover, even though I slashed the amount by $100 this month.

We both ran into "forgetting to take money" problems this month. I forgot gas money and my husband forgot grocery money. The way I handled this was to use the debit card for the purchase, then carry the cash over to March. So, I got $x less out of the bank for March and reused the money that was "spent" but left in the jars in February.

Jar: Amount: Left:
Misc 57 4
Supplies 50 32
Gas 125 30
Grocery 400 54

Added to sinking (roof) fund: 120 Total in fund: 330

Month 2: How'd we do?

2010-02-25T15:08:00.003-05:00

January:

cc1: 0
cc2: 5.47
cc3: 212
cc4: 4103.61
cc5: 5294.84

Loan 1: 4824.07
Loan 2: 12260.85
Loan 3: 13471.85

Total: 40172.69

February:

cc1,2,3: 0
cc4: 644.17
cc5: 6070

Loan 1: 4730.83
Loan 2: 11604.45
Loan 3: 12911.85

Total: 35961.30

Debt Paid: 4211.39

Total debt paid: 7911.44

January Income Statement

2010-02-24T23:17:00.003-05:00

Revenue: In addition to our income from our jobs, we also discovered we had an $1800+ balance in our bank accounts. We had gift money as well.

Fixed Expenses: Power skyrocketed to $300. Comcast raised our cable bill. We hadn't canceled the server.

Debt Repayment: I now own my computer, phone and work clothes! We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 and a huge amount of the balance on 3. The rest of the cards and loans got minimal amounts.

Variable: My husband's car is the main expense here. He had to register it, and before doing that, had $700 of work done on it. We did put that on the credit card, but I am sorry that we did. I feel we are having Karmic retribution now (see previous post). Travel is our plane tickets for the wedding in May, which we paid cash for. Bank fees include finance charges and a late fee incurred while I juggled around our new payment schedules. My "doll" budget includes the money I spent from my discretionary jar, an order made this summer that was sent off backorder, and some eyes and faceups (in cash) for my BJDs. I believe the rest of these expenses, including our sinking fund, were discussed in the Jan cash jar post.

We had a net income of almost $2500. Overall, a win. While we would not have come out positive just based on our income, I increased debt repayment and some other expenses upon learning we had more money to work with (as can be seen if you look back at the original budget). So, as the income increased, so I increased the outgo. This gave us a great starting momentum.

Challenges

2010-02-24T12:05:00.003-05:00

The January income statement is done, I just haven't gotten around to scanning it. I am still tweaking the March budget, too.

Some things have come up. This is what Dave Ramsey calls Murphy.

The good: I got a dog this weekend. Um. I know I said I wouldn't. But I knew I would know the right one when I saw him (on the internet). I had let some others pass me by, but this one I couldn't. I hate going to pet organizations ~ I always want to take them all home, so I guess it is good I stuck with just one. He is a rescue - he was surrendered to animal control. He is a silky terrier, registered with AKC with papers. Blows my mind. He is house broken (YAY!) but we are having some problems with him chasing the cat. I hope this will settle itself some soon. The cat is staying upstairs, and sometimes under the bed. We have him confined downstairs. I paid for his adoption and his things at Petsmart in cash, though. In future budgets, I will raise my pet allocation and I also will have to board him in May for a few days, so will have to account for that as well.

The rest:

My mother in law was diagnosed with lung cancer. She has to have surgery to remove part of her lung. She has never smoked and is the healthiest, most in shape person I know. My father in law is a disabled vet, who just went through an amputation. My husband has to go out there to take care of his father while his mother goes through surgery, and then possibly both of them. Luckily, his parents have since offered to pay for his flight, and he can work remotely, so that takes the financial strain off of an already stressful and emotional situation. From what I understand, her prognosis is good.

Our roof. We have a leak which really appears to be a lost flashing. The water comes in down one of those silver pipes that sticks out of the roof, then drips down and there is some water damage in the ceiling of the bedroom below. We have gotten a ton of rain in the last year, and that is how we came to notice it, though there was previous damage in that spot. We put a bucket in the attic and went on about our lives. Meanwhile, we had our gutters cleaned a couple months ago, and the guy alerted us that there is damage on the roof of our porch. There is a huge crater in the roof (we can see it from a window) and the wood underneath is rotting - all the way down to where you can see the rot on the ceiling of the porch. On the one hand, it is just the porch and I don't feel it is an emergency. On the other, it could be an indicaiton of further problems we can't see over the main house. You just never know with insurance companies, and I have never had to deal with them before so I didn't know what to do. Roofs are always the huge scary expense. It turns out that while our deductable for most things is $1000, like we thought, it is $3800 for hail or wind damage. That is how most people have been getting their roofs replaced. This is a HUGE additional amount of money. The insurance company is sending someone out to look at it. I guess what we do from there depends... If they will cover it and redo the whole roof, I have to find $3800 somewhere. If they don't cover or won't do the whole roof, we will just fix the porch, and I have no idea what that will cost at this point. I have chosen not to pay off cc4 this month ($500 extra payment) and to pull $1000 from our debt repayment the next couple months to help cover. We will pull the money out of savings and pay it back. This really throws a wrench into my payoff plan, though.

Dentist: My husband needs two crowns. Luckily, insurance is going to pay for 80%, but that still leaves around $500 for us. We will use the med card for some of it. I guess when my husband finds out when he will be out of town, he will schedule around that and we can go from there.

February budget, a little belated

2010-02-14T12:23:00.004-05:00

My husband finally got my computer working. He says it was a bad stick of ram which corrupted the hard drive and os. So he took out the ram and we had to order a recovery disk, because apparently computers don't come with them anymore. We had to wait for that to arrive, then install it and I have spent the last couple of days trying to set my computer back up how it was, less some ram. In the end, a $20 fix.

The budget:

Income - My mother gave me money to pay for my holiday gift, and when I opened it, there was quite a bit extra in there. A nice surprise. It goes straight to the credit cards, and puts me quite a bit closer to my April 11 goal. Another $200 from birthday money for my husband (which he has STILL not deposited).

Fixed Expenses - Our power bill jumped up to almost $300 in January, which blew me away. I knew it was going to go up, but really. So I budgeted the same amount for February. We cut our cable back a level so my guess for that is $75. At the time I made this budget, my husband had still not canceled the server service, so I was anticipating another month for that (as it turns out, we were already paid through March).

Debt Repayment - We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 in January (YAY!) and only had $212 left on credit card 3, so will pay that off. That brings us to cc4 which will get the anticipated $1500 plus the $2000 from mom. That brings it to within $600 of being paid off. Minimum payments to cc5 and the loans.

Variable Expenses - We had some expected expenses this month, so I reduced our grocery money from $500 to $400 since we had so much left over in January. (My husband: Is this like the government where I have to use the money even if I don't need to or I lose my budget?) We have a convention we go to every year, and if we bought tickets by Feb 15 (we did - paid with debit) it was $140 for both of us. Price goes up every month afterward. My husband talks about going back to school - his job will reimburse him. But he tends to be pretty lazy about getting things done - like actually applying on time. I think that cost him his admission last year. He told me when we were going over the budget to put in his admission fees, so I did. He has still not applied as far as I know. It's on him. I am not going to hound him like I am his mom. If he wants it enough, he will get off the computer games and do it. The money is there.

And now a word from our sponsors...

2010-02-08T22:19:00.003-05:00

Well, so while I wait for my computer to get running again (I can only scan PDFs at work) and wait for the January numbers to come in, I thought I would use this time to comment on another life decision we have going on. While this blog is primarily financial, it is also not read by anyone I know. (In fact, I don't think it is read by anyone but me). And I want to take advantage of that fact by writing about other things I want to keep private from those I know at this time. Many important things could happen over the course of turning my life around financially, and I would hate to have an incomplete story.

Part of the motivation for doing this is to open up the possibility of having a baby. I could never see before how we could afford a baby, as daycare is likely to eat most of my salary, and we can't live without my salary. I have very mixed feelings about having a baby. I like my life and I am terrified by the whole idea. I don't feel ready - or even old enough. But the truth is, I am getting to a point where if we are going to do this, it needs to get done. Especially if it could take time or we need to consider alternatives. That can add years (not to mention money). I don't want to miss my opportunity to have a child because of fear or not getting our act together. And there is a definite point where I will pull the plug because we are too old.

Here is my plan of the moment. I have been off my birth control for a month. I am highly irregular, so I am going to start doing all the charting and everything to see if I can find a pattern. I don't intend to start trying until at least we have credit cards paid off. At this point, that could be as early as May. But in interest of researching my body (and hopefully losing some weight) I may still wait til later in the summer. Then I figure we enter a period of "not trying not preventing" and see what happens. I honestly don't think that is going to do it, but you never know. Once we are completely debt free (hopefully by my 35th bday in April 2011) we start really putting the effort into it. Of course, that puts me past that crucial age.

This is all just my thinking and planning. It is not sanctioned by a doctor (Who has been telling me to get pregnant for three years now) or anyone else. The one book I have read is pretty depressing - our chances are really really slim based on weight and age.

Where's the budget?

2010-02-04T19:43:00.002-05:00

Well, it's written and saved on my work computer, and we are living it.

However, my home computer decided to die now that it is paid off. I don't think we got the coverage on it. My husband has been half heartedly messing with it, but I am at least temporarily without computer. Which means no scans. If work settles down, it is possible I can scan it there, but it has been crazy busy.

Is it really that hard to put a receipt in a jar?

2010-01-30T23:16:00.004-05:00

We are entering the last day of January, and I am excited to say we made it through our first month. I will have a full income statement report later in the month, when the rest of the statements come, but I thought I would highlight what we can assess now. Overall, I am proud of our first month's effort.

We ended up with quite a bit of money left in the cash jars this month, I was surprised. The jar I was most concerned with was the gas jar, but in the end we still had $10 in there. I really thought I was going to run out of gas money. I haven't had a full tank all month, and gas prices went up a bit, but I have filled about $20 a week all month. My husband - who works from home most days - only had to fill once.

We only ordered in twice - pizza once and chinese once. We got the chinese on Thursday when we didn't feel like cooking, it was the end of the month, and we still had money. That cleaned out the takeout jar, which I also used to go on two lunch dates with friends this month - spending $6 on one and $5 on the other.

Supply money was spent on much needed furnace filters, lightbulbs, and some shipping supplies (as I have been selling some doll items). We were left with $6 and some change in that jar. Miscellaneous was spent on a birthday card for my cousin, post office, the work lunch (I opted out of a second work lunch) and my husband's emmission inspection. There was $10 and some change left in that jar. Our grocery total was $183 under the budget, which was excellent! I guess my husband had a point about the holidays hiking the amounts, plus we did not go to costco this month, which is $100-200 normally. He was very good about only going to the store once a week, which I also doubted, and did a very good job tracking our food purchase and use. I will also admit he spent the most on the trip that I accompanied him. This is why I have to stay out of the store.

Where I have run into trouble with him is in replacing the money with a receipt. I was missing a Kroger receipt (which I later found in the kitchen), the pizza AND Chinese receipt, and an indication of his emissions expense. It took a while to figure out where that money had gone. He is also griping about having to use cash instead of his debit. I like not using the debit - especially while we are getting out of debt - for two reasons. First, I think you spend less, and second, you have a visual indication of how much money there is left for the month. When I went to staples to get shipping supplies, I had $20 with me. I had to make that stretch. And there were several things there that I know would have found their way into my cart if I was using my debit or credit card.

I still have money in my discretion jar, and he does not. It is discretionary, so no receipts required, so I have no idea where he spent that money (he had some money in his wallet that he had added to the jar, so it ended up more than $13). I have $13 of my $25 left. I spent it on secondhand books - one being Financial Peace, and a couple of book club books. HOWEVER, I did paypal a few things to my bank account. So, I spent more than my limit, but I knew I had the money in my account to cover and I did not charge them. My husband also charged $700 in car repairs this month as well. A bit of a setback.

The extra amounts have been added to a "sinking fund" which is an envelope, because my husband recycled the jar I intended to use. But that is ok, because I wrote the amount for the month on the front of the envelope. We can use this money for our hotel in May, for Christmas, for surprise expenses. Its like an emergency fund for our emergency fund.

Cash Jars: Budgeted: left over:
Gas 125 10
Supplies 50 6
Miscellaneous 57 10
Grocery 500 183
Takeout 60 1

Sinking fund January total : 210

Semi-Official Go numbers

2010-01-18T15:17:00.003-05:00

I have been wanting to post our starting debt numbers. I was waiting for some statements. I am also still waiting for the school to send back my money to the student loan people. They have still not done that, plus I don't know how long that takes to clear. But they probably just haven't done it yet. I will have to call again. I hate that.

So, our starting debt numbers are only semi-official, because the one loan amount is not entirely accurate. I have decided to go ahead and use the numbers we have currently, and if/when I get the refund, I will just adjust accordingly or enter it as a "payment".

cc1: 376.06
cc2: 600.38
cc3: 1412
cc4: 4035.31
cc5: 5294.84

Total: 11,718.59

Student Loan 1: 5011.84
Student Loan 2: 12267.85
Personal Loan: 13471.85

Total: 30,751.54

Grand total: 42,470.13

December Income Statement

2010-01-18T14:44:00.004-05:00

All the December statements finally came and I was able to make the December income statement this weekend. Some problems with my computer held up my scanning abilities.

Income: Other income includes my bonus from work, which I didn't know I was going to get. I used it to pay for my doll.

Fixed Expenses: Charged for three insurance installments again this month, also renewed triple - a.

Debt Repayment: Pretty standard. Paid off cc6.

Variable Expenses: December is the month of gift - giving, and we spent nearly $400. And that was me giving bare bones. Ugh. No pet expenses for the first time in a long time. My husband had to pay $20 each way to take a bag to visit his parents *BS*. The doll expenses include my expensive custom doll I wrote about before, and also Karito Kids showed up at Tuesday Morning at 70% off, so I went wild buying those up. The clothing is my bridesmaid dress for the wedding in May. I sponsored an Angel Tree child, and that was my December charity. Med is my birth control, which I had to pay out of pocket, because I had used up my flex card. Cash was cash for my husband's taxi to his parents' and also my December lunch/vending/spending money.

Summary: If we took out the gifts and the dolls, we still don't quite balance, but its a lot closer. I was surprised it was as off as it was. Looking at October - December, I think it is safe to say we were probably overspending by approximately $1000-$1500 a month. However, we may have actually been balancing on my old salary, and just hadn't made the adjustment to less income. Can't wait to see how January looks!

on the complications of social work ettiquite.

2010-01-15T23:10:00.004-05:00

In making our budget I did not consider my job could complicate some things. I learned this week that we "celebrate" the birthdays of people on our team by ordering food and paying for it ourselves. Nevermind that I am constantly writing out checks for various lunch events my firm hosts. We have to pay for our birthday lunches (except the bday kid). God forbid the event happens off site - then we have to clock out and have no control over how long it takes. (Still have to clock out anyway, but at least people start getting antsy once the half hour is up and we can trickle out).

This revelation sent me in a real spiral. I was very tortured over this decision. Sure, I could choose not to order but still show up with my own lunch. And now that seems like the obvious answer. I have so much social anxiety. When we had the work Christmas party, I was having headaches and stomach aches all day beforehand. I was scared to go. I am so insecure and I have a hard time conversing with people I don't know, which makes making friends really hard. I tend to keep to myself, which might make me look like a bitch, I donno. I just like to stay out of the way and do my thing. But when I do have a conversation that seems to be going well, I get so excited and go into overdrive and can say some crazy things, or be unable to shut up. So, I keep my mouth closed in uncomfortable situations.

Anyway, all this anxiety about a work affair and the unknown played into it. After being in a frenzy to my husband over it, he suggested I take the money from miscellaneous. I was still tortured about it, but I did, and ordered a $7 turkey burger. However, after tax, tip (why are we tipping with take-away?) and probably a dollar for the birthday-boy's meal, it was $10. Two people did not order - one being my boss. (she eats turkey on rice cakes. It grosses me out). A third ordered from the restaurant in the building instead. We all sat at a table together and kibbutzed a little bit. After about a half an hour, things broke up. I only ate half my sandwitch so I was able to eat the other half the next day for lunch.

I learned that there are two more birthdays and a goodbye coming up in the next couple weeks. I can't be spending money every time. So I will have the confidence now to bring my own lunch and still show up. Just showing up is a huge effort for me. It gives me so much anxiety and I really have to force myself to do it. It is rediculous that at my age this is still going on. I have an event tomorrow that I have been planning to go to for a couple of months. A few days ago I started coming up with all kinds of reasons why I couldn't/shouldn't go. That's when I know I have to force myself. Sometimes I give in, sometimes I don't. I am just nervous because I don't know anyone there and I am going alone. The money thing just seems to give me more excuse to skip things. Interestingly, I have also managed to set up dates with three friends over the next few weeks. Again, not good for the wallet, but a necessary evil for me. I enjoy seeing them when I am there... but I get so nervous beforehand. And when I burrow, months can go by and I won't see or communicate with friends. Then they start to think I don't care or I am mad. It is important to have the social connections, I really want to have good friends in my life, it is just a real effort to put myself out there.

...not entirely about money. I am just analyzing my relationship with money and it leads to these other revelations.

Some good luck?

2010-01-06T21:57:00.003-05:00

My husband told me, after paying the mortgage, that we still had $1400 in the checking account. This made me nervous first (that what didn't I pay/ what hasn't been cashed feeling), but should be accurate. A little bit of it was Christmas money and some refund checks he deposited. The rest must just be accumulated. He likes to leave more money in the account than I do. I thought a bit about what to do with this money. I decided 500 extra should go to the cards, 500 should be put aside for our plane tickets for the wedding in May (it has been stressing me out where that money would come from - plus I think we need to pay for a hotel too, and I still need shoes). He also wants a spaceheater for our basement, as we are having record breaking cold temperatures. My objection to that is more about safety than money, but as the Christmas money was to him from his mom, I figure he is entitled to spend a little of it on something he wants. And the rest will seed the account for now - I fully expect some high power bills coming, and we still haven't cut the cable or the server.

Then I finally cracked my Direct Loans online account and got to see where that is for the first time in months. And I about had a heart attack. The school was instructed to return any extra over tuition and books. And I only had two classes the last quarter. Nothing had been returned to the loan since my first quarter. I called Finaid at my school. He told me, "You are absolutely right." Then said something lame about how he is doing the yearly tax thingies you get from your school, but he hadn't gotten to me yet, so he didn't know. I have a $4000 credit at the college. How do you not notice that?? Seriously? Aren't you supposed to be returning it quarterly? Anyway. Hopefully that will get cleared right up now. I estimate the loan will still be around the $10000 mark once all is said and done.

Today, my sister found killer airfare for the wedding. $179 total, round trip. A few days ago it was $250 pre-taxes. We have all pounced on these tickets, so we are all booked and I can stop worrying about the flights and prices now. I paid with cash from our account. And it cost less than I thought it would.

Meanwhile, they make it as difficult as possible to cancel things. I have been trying to cancel my Bally's membership for a couple days. The first time I didn't have my membership card, so didn't know my membership number. Today I got stuck in digital menu land. Apparently, you can only cancel your membership for reasons of medical, no Bally in your city, or buyer's remorse. I do not fit any of these. I paid off my "contract" years ago and have just been getting charged $12 a month membership fees. I just want to cancel that membership. Pushing 9 or 0 does not get you a real person. So, I went with buyer's remorse. A long tirade about under what circumstances you can cancel your contract goes on and then finally, at the end, it gives me an option to speak to a representative. I was on hold for a couple minutes, then told that they had excessive hold times and I should call back again and it hung up on me. Seriously. More than 15 minutes of my work day wasted on this, and no result. I don't like confrontation, which is admittedly one of the reasons I have put this off for.... years. But now I am just pissed.

Here we go!

2010-01-02T21:34:00.005-05:00

In the last weeks I have gathered jars for our cash budget categories. Between my job teaching, and our recycling tendencies, I had no problem finding jars around the house to repurpose. For fun, I printed out labels with the category name and the amounts. On the right you see the credit card jar, which I put all my credit cards into, but not my debit card, because it just scares me right now to have no emergency safety net. In the back you can see our super huge jelly belly jar which we dump our coins into, and have been doing that for years (I have another one upstairs for when I do laundry). The grocery and supplies jars used to be garlic jars, and I love the smell when I open them. I wonder if the money will soak that smell.

I went to the bank this morning and took out $950 in cash from my account. That was terrifying, but they didn't even blink. They gave me exactly what I wanted just how I wanted it. I don't think I have ever had that much money in my purse. I took it straight home, entered it in WG? and divvyed it up in the jars. As we spend this month, we will need to take the money out of the jar ahead of time, bring back change and receipt. Then, at the end of the month, I will use the receipts to help me track what we spend for our income statement. In our best case scenerio, we will still have money in the jars at the end of the month. We are discussing if we want to carry that money over to the next month, or transfer it to a travel jar. Coins to the coin jar.

So here we go. Wish me luck.

Where's George

2010-01-02T19:49:00.003-05:00

Excuse my head shadow in the shot :)

I just want to put out a plug for Where's George. I think it is a really cool idea, and somehow I have only come to it recently. Where's George allows you to enter and track your money. You enter your money on their website, then you mark your bill to tell other people who get it to go to the website and enter it again. If you are lucky, they will tell you where they got it or how they are spending it. But it shows you how far your money went in how many days.

I have been using WG about a year and a half. I was getting out 50 - 100 $1 bills from the bank every month - generally for my vending machine habit or when you have to pool for gifts at work and so forth. I entered, marked, and spent. In that time, I have gotten about 170 hits and entered 1500 bills. I am ranked in the top 100 for my state. I have had some interesting comments. I have had bills with repeated hits. I really enjoy it.

So, now going to cash only, and not just petty cash I am entering the bills in WG. I have a lot larger bills now, because I don't want to take out, enter, stamp or spend $1000 in ones a month. I am excited to have more entries in WG. At the same time, I don't mark up the big bills quite as much as my ones. I have a mystery stamp from stamp-connection.com which I use to mark the 100 and 50s on the back and the 20s and 10s on the front. 5s and 1s I mark all to hell (I also have a "signature"stamp I use on $20 and under). I just am not used to passing large bills like that, and it makes me nervous that they will think they are counterfeit. I've had people question my 1s in the past, and I am nervous enough just carrying and spending those big bills. Maybe I will get more comfortable. Stamp-connection has a lot of cool stamps and I have added to my collection as I have gotten more into it, but if you want to start up cheap, they have a stamp for $4 with free shipping. They have shocking fast shipping. Or, you can always just write on your bills.

January's budget, and why I am already scared...

2009-12-29T21:53:00.004-05:00

January's Budget.

Fixed: We are going to cut back on our cable, and my husband is working to set up a computer here so we can bring our server home. Those were pretty much the fixed areas I saw could get trimming. Sure, I could cut tivo and netflix and even cable... but we have to have a plan we can stick to. At this point, I do not feel our situation is that dire, and we do use all of those things. We are already going to lose a lot of favorite channels in the cable cutback, but we hope to get uverse in the future after we are out of credit debt and look forward to that (it is not currently in our area). I am also worried about our power bill. It has been shockingly low for winter here the last couple of months. I am scared it could come back with a vengance. It is a rather flexible fixed expense.

Debt: We will knock out CC1 and CC2 and about half of CC3. This is exciting. My tiny payments to CC 4 and 5 give me a stomach ache, tho. Those are the ones we are usually putting all the money to. Hopefully we will manage not to use them and all will go well. The payment to 4 includes the budgetted amount for netflix which gets charged to it, and the payment for 5 includes the budgetted amount for alarm, tivo and insurance. Plus a little extra towards the finance charge. (The top total is the actual total, the bottom total is the budgetted total. You should see what the non-print-area part of this spreadsheet looks like...)

Variable: We have set up "funds" for our lawn boy and our pets, so when those expenses do happen we have cash to cover. I would like a small travel fund as well, but it isn't in the cards this month. Instead, we have to pay my husband's car reg tax. I guess that is all I have to say about that. This section is all about willpower.

Save: :'(

Leaves us with a tiny bit left over for "just in case" and not bouncing checks.

~~~~~~~

I showed the budget to my husband, and he was mostly amenable. He did bring up a couple good points. One was his car renewal, which has made its way into the budget. If it is car renewal time, it must be birthday time. We hope to have some sort of family party, either out or at my family's which hopefully won't cost us anything. Gift? I guess that has to come from my discretionary (codenamed doll) or not at all. He also wants service done on his car. A necessary expense, but one that makes me nervous, and I know he will use the credit card for :( We also have to at least get a roof inspector out here. He wants some hardware for his bring-home-the-server project. And we have a wedding looming in the not so distant future. Plus convention tickets to buy (which I thought we had more time to save for).

We have a written plan. That doesn't mean we get stoned if something comes up. We will see how it goes.

On Dave Ramsey

2009-12-29T21:18:00.003-05:00

So, I had never heard of Dave Ramsey before I started doing some reading and research about debt - then the name was everywhere. I happened across him on TV one night, and since have been watching him every night and listening to his radio program while at work. He has a little too much religion in his finances for my taste, but his financial advice is sound and I have only disagreed with him a couple of times. I like to try to guess his answer to the question before he does. I find him very inspiring and he keeps me revved up and focused on my goal. He makes me feel like it is possible.

I am rethinking my plan. I had the same basic idea - to tackle the debt smallest to largest, and to build emergency fund, but I was trying to do it all at once, and I didn't want to just pay minimums on the larger debts. I have done 100 different spreadsheets and the thing about his plan is... we get out so much faster. We can be out of credit debt in July, and loan debt in May 2011. And then have over $20,000 saved by the end of 2011.

The thing that worries me about it is the combination of not having much savings and not using the credit cards. I am scared we are going to run into some areas where we may need to use the credit card if we don't have the savings built up. We already know we need roof work - we don't know the extent yet.... We also have some plumbing problems. And two old and rickety cars. We have an out of state wedding to go to in May. It is really stepping out on faith to try to tackle these things without credit or savings.... I guess we will do what we can now and cross these bridges when we get to them.

November Income Statement

2009-12-22T23:11:00.004-05:00

November:

It appears I had three paychecks in November. The "other income" is made up of a paper paycheck (before direct deposit kicked in) and some rebates from my pet insurance.

Power is way down, phone is up, because of the stolen phone. Only one insurance bill this month - evens out with the three last month.

Lots of debt repayment going on. This is certainly what a typical month would look like there. The CC6 was some clothing purchases. It is paid off as of December. CC2 got hit with the phone replacement - had been paid off. CC3 resulted from financing new carpet. In the months of caring for a sick and elderly dog, it took a toll on our carpet and also our wood floor in the two rooms he was confined to. The house stank and the carpet was nasty. It had to be replaced ASAP. We are going to live with the wood damage for now; it isn't too bad unless you know what you are looking for. It is 0% if we pay it off in 12 months. This is the 3rd card I plan to pay off (hence, why it is named cc3).

Our gas and restaurant expenses are down. Grocery is down, but not significantly so. Pet expense is high, in part due to funerary expenses for my dog. "Supplies" were a couple of pieces of furniture I got to make my Thanksgiving guests more comfortable. Travel is my husband's plane ticket to his parents for Christmas. I can't go - new job. My husband hurt his ankle which required a trip to the emergency room. Doll expense is down (Cyber Monday sale) but gaming is up (Our Wii has been broken for a few months, and we finally sent it in. My husband spent some extra money in WOW - god knows why). We still see some clothing purchases.

October income statement

2009-12-21T23:10:00.004-05:00

Hmm. I am not sure if this is legible.

In order to know where we were going, and how to get there, it was necessary to see where we had been. I decided to look at our income and expenses for the last 3 months of 2009. Of course, we can't look at December yet because we are still in it, but I was able to get a good enough picture from Oct and Nov to move ahead.

Unfortunately, October is not representative of a typical month for several reasons. As you can see, we spent twice as much as we made in October. While I don't doubt we have been spending more than we make consistently, I do not think it is typically that much.

First of all, I had no income in October. I started my job in mid-October, and my first paycheck didn't happen until November. Next, because I had no income, I could not pay on my loan to my dad. This is the only payment I have missed, and I told him it was going to happen. We got billed for three insurance payments instead of two (in Nov we got billed for one...) so I am keeping an average of two, though obviously it may fluctuate for whatever reason.

The other reason is that we took a mini vacation before I started my job and my last term of classes. While our stay was free, we had increased gas and food expenses. The pet expense is mostly from my dog's boarding while we were on the trip. We had a massage while we were there, which we both agree now was NOT a $300 massage. Though it was nice.

My supply and clothing expense is very high (I usually never buy clothes) because I was starting my new job. Because of my teaching subject, I was able to get away with a lot at school, but now I work in a firm and needed appropriate clothing. It was getting colder, and I needed weather appropriate clothing. The supplies are things I needed for work, but I am having a hard time remembering $500 worth, I will have to look back at the itemization and see what else I threw into that category.

My husband paid for his WOW account for 6 mos, and I would love to gloss over the doll expense, but this is why I do this. To take an honest look at what I was spending. First, there was a really good discount sale on AG.com and I bought stuff. Then, of course after the sale, they announced Kirsten's retirement, and I bought two expensive items for her. There may be a couple ebay purchases in there too.

It looks like I put Bally's in there twice... that needs to be cancelled. The $40 expense is the kid who cuts our lawn.

The sacrifices we are going to have to make this year

2009-12-21T13:03:00.003-05:00

In addition to just spending less, no more dolls and no more credit card use, we have some pretty big sacrifices we have had to accept in order to do this.

Sure, we are cutting back on our cable, and (after a pretty heated debate) my husband has compromised giving up his Texas server, and trying to set it up at home. We have to order less delivery, and we never ate out or went to movies anyway (s0mething I instituted during that first year, which just stuck. The last movie we saw in a theater was the most recent Harry Potter, and I think that is the only theatre movie we saw last year).

But we had some bigger plans for this year.

No Dog. At least, not as soon as I had hoped. I wasn't planning on getting a dog until after new year sometime, just because of my personal schedule right now. That doesn't mean I was going to go out Jan 2 and get a dog... I wasn't sure when I would be ready again, or when the right dog would be there for me, but I have been looking and did plan to get a dog again at some point. I don't know that I can promise NO dog in 2010, but I have budgeted a rather large "pet fund" partly due to all the pet bills we have been experiencing. I don't expect to have as many animal emergencies now, but I do have our kitty on pet insurance. It is expensive, but it more than paid for itself this year. I don't expect that to be the case again until she gets older, but I have learned the pet insurance lesson. So perhaps once that fund has gotten large, and barring any emergencies, we will use it for a new dog. It'll be a few months at least.

No 5th year anniversary in Hawaii trip. We have been planning this forever. Since before we got married. We couldn't swing Hawaii for our honeymoon, but for SURE we would be able to do it for our 5th anniversary (which is in August). Nope. It has been very hard coming to terms with the fact that we will not be doing this. Maybe for our 6th we will have our s**t together and actually have saved for this trip? While it is disappointing, it is a relief to know I won't have the weight of adding another several thousand dollars onto our credit cards this fall.

No baby. The whole baby thing is so big it probably deserves its own post. Its own blog. I will try to be concise. While I have many reservations about bring a child into this world, particularly one with our combined genetic makeup, the fact that I do not feel we can afford a child is pretty much my biggest excuse. However, we aren't getting any younger here. I have a family medical history of problematic pregnancies, and I have my own medical issues that will probably make getting pregnant difficult. So, I had it in my head we would start trying this spring (when I was past my first 90-days at work, and the baby, if easily concieved, would come at least a year after I started my job.) Because I think it will take a while to get pregnant, and because I don't want to be ninety at my child's high school graduation, I figured we should start trying sooner rather than later, to allow time to try to do it naturally, and possibly time to try alternative methods or adoption, which can also take a lot of time (and be expensive). I have put this on hold. Again, we can reevaluate our situation in the fall and see how close to out-of-debt and savings goals we are, but I cannot imagine adding the possible financial and medical complications of a pregnancy on top of trying to get out of debt. And how much better will I feel bringing in a baby I know I can afford to support?

What we like to spend our money on

2009-12-21T11:24:00.003-05:00

Now that I have given my sob story, let me tell the fun part of our spending; the part we are going to miss.

My Husband: Buys everything electronic. He loves the latest computer gadets and games. He is a gamer. He plays World of Warcraft and many others. He is never without his computer. He also very much likes to go to Kroger about 6 times a week. He is the grocery shopper and cook in our family. I think he was a little surprised to find we are spending 6-700 a month on groceries, but tried to explain it as the family holiday dinners. He doesn't spend a lot otherwise, though he does take random and sometimes pricy trips to Walmart and the like from time to time.

Me: I have never met a bargain I didn't like. I rarely almost never pay full price for anything. I am a bargain/clearance rack/off season shopper. I get so much more for my money that way. Of course, I put those bargain purchases on credit cards. I can also get sucked into buying something I may or may not need just because it is on a good sale or I have coupons or free shipping or whatever.

My other downfall is my collections & ebay. I have always been a collector, but during our poor times broke the habit. I didn't look at ebay at all. I didn't buy frivolous stuff. Before we got married, I was big into vintage purses. I don't buy those as often anymore (in fact, I think I have bought one since we got married) partly because they are expensive, partly because my interests have changed, partly because they are getting harder to find. But they are still special to me and displayed in my home.

Now I am into dolls. I have a large American Girl collection, which has really been my downfall the last couple years. I also collect Ellowyne Wilde, Karito Kids, and ball jointed dolls, which are particularly pricy. In the past year I have only bought one AG doll (on sale), one Ellowyne doll (a custom repaint off ebay) and one ball jointed doll which I had paid on layaway (onto my credit card). I don't feel that that is unreasonable, but I have spent hundreds of dollars on stuff for my dolls - particularly my AG dolls. American girl is retiring dolls and things especially fast lately. Last fall, I was buying up things for Samantha before she retired. This fall, it was Kirsten. I have most of Kirsten's collection already, but didn't have three of the priciest items. I only got two of them, but that was around $250 right there. I only buy AG stuff on sale or free shipping, but when those are options, I do spend a lot.

My doll habit is going to have to be the first thing to go. I have budgeted a very small discretionary amount for each of us, but it isn't going to begin to give me what I am going to want to spend. Already, there is an Ellowyne doll and outfit on the WI site that I have wanted for years that is on last call & sale, and I have to sit on my hands not to get her. Speculation is that American Girl may retire two dolls next year. Ouch. All that stuff I will have to pay elevated prices on ebay later. I have a BJD doll head that doesn't have a body. She will have to stay that way another year. I am just trying to tell myself how good it will feel to be able to pay cash for my purchases in the future, to know I can afford them, and not have to stress about the credit cards going up.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did buy a very expensive doll this week. This is a doll I have wanted for a year and a half. I struggled with this decision, and is in part what sent me on this debt-free panic-attack path. He is in final production and will never be available again, except possibly on second hand markets. He is a limited edition of 20. In the world. (Justification, justification). He is very special, and I am at peace now with my decision to get him. Was it the smartest use of my money? Hell no. Does it appear to minimize my committment to my 2010 plan? Probably. But it doesn't. Think of it as that big "last meal" before you start a diet. I paid for him in full and in cash. And I don't expect to get another doll in 2010 or until we are credit card debt free and I can pay cash in full again.

A little history

2009-12-20T22:07:00.005-05:00

While we certainly are responsible for a good share of our own debt, we have had plenty of bad luck which has contributed as well.

When we got married, we were each homeowners living in different states. We got married with $32000 credit card debt between us. That was all our own faults. I moved in with him. I was unable to find work teaching there, though I had plenty of interviews. My house didn't sell for over a year. We were paying two mortgages on basically one salary. I did have a part time teaching job, later added aftercare, and for a while had two additional part time jobs. I eventually burnt out and dropped the other two jobs. We were very very poor. I was pretty miserable, and it did not make for a good start to our marriage. There were many times I almost just came home. I guess ultimately, that is what I did. After another school year started, and I still hadn't gotten a job, I started looking at jobs back home. I applied for one, and within the hour the principal had called me to come for an interview. I booked a flight home and went in for the interview. I had a whole portfolio of student work, etc, which I had been promoting with all my might in umpteen interviews in the last two years. The principal opened the portfolio, and the first page was my teaching certificate from the state. He said "That's all I needed to see," closed the portfolio, and offered me the job on the spot.

I moved home with my parents - of course my house had just sold (I basically broke even, not incluing all the empty mortgage and utility payments). Within a couple months, my husband had found a job here and we moved him down. Throughout this time, we had managed to pay off both our cars, his student loan, and a nice chunk of the credit cards. We went house shopping and found our beautiful house. But we had the problem of his townhome. As we had lived there, we had watched the units around us foreclose and sit empty. We knew there was no way we would be able to sell it. We knew we couldn't carry it. After a lot of considering, we ultimately decided to sell to homevestors. I still believe this was the best option available to us, and am glad we did it. However, it left us with a >$40000 mortgage. I still had $10,000 left over from the sale of my house minus the downpayment on the new house and we put that toward the townhouse mortgage. My dad covered the rest, and that is the personal loan that I pay $560 to every month. It is still at least half what we would pay if we still had the town home, not including the headache.

The summer after we bought our house, our a/c blew in the midst of 115 deg weather. That was about $1000

A couple of years ago we refinanced our mortgage. We did have two loans (which was making me crazy) on 6.5 and 7.5 % I think. We were able to get an interest only loan with our interest at around 1.5. Our payments are only around 500-700 but we still pay the same $2000 a month. My dad put us onto this, I think he wanted us to pay the minimum and pay off our debts but that terrifies me, because eventually the market is going to come back, our interest rate will go up, and we will have to refi again, and we have to be able to afford that payment. However, we are able to pay off much more of our principal each month doing this. We have paid off $20,000 so far in that time. They gave us more money than the original two loans. We used that money to pay off credit cards (yes, I know now that was dumb but it felt good at the time). I fully intended to keep the cards paid off at the time, but we started to run into another bout of bad luck.

First, my car needed new shocks or struts or something which cost $1000. Then, a few months later BOTH our cars needed transmission work. Mine needed a whole new transmission aroun $2500 and my husband's needed a part - about $800. This all went on the credit card. Then we began a two year tour of Animal Emergency Rooms. First, my cat. She had feline leukemia. I was told she wouldn't make it to adulthood. She lived over 5 years without ever being sick for a day. Then she started having seizures. We had several trips to emergency rooms for this, and she was on phenobarbital. Then she started losing alarming amounts of weight, even though she still ate just fine. We managed to keep her relatively stable, until we lost her in April.

In January, my dog was diagnosed with diabetes. We had several emergency room visits for that, plus bi-monthly visits to the vet for glucose testing. He was on insulin and some other medications. When by April he still wasn't stabilizing, we had to go through further diagnostics, which revealed a tumor on his adrenal gland. If they had told me they could operate, I would have, but they basically told me he would not be with us much longer. This was the same day we later lost my cat. It was a horrible day. After that, he only had one more emergency visit for a sugar low, which they kept him for a whole weekend. He died in November. I don't want to add up all the vet bills over the last couple of years, but I am sure it would be close to $10000.

The night before I started my new job, my car was robbed in my own driveway. From what I can tell, they only took my phone, charger and Ipod, (and a lot of loose change) but they really could have gotten a lot more. (They even went through my new bag of work clothes, but I guess they didn't like any of it.) We did replace the phone and the charger, but not the Ipod. I asked for it for the holidays, but did not get it. I have some Amazon gift cards that I may use toward a new one, I haven't decided yet. I haven't felt the same about our supposedly very safe area, though.

So, we have a bit of credit card debt again. I do also want to mention that I have never been a minimum payment person. We were paying $2500 to our credit cards alone until I switched jobs and we couldn't afford to anymore, and now I have budgeted us a little differently. As I said, I am not taking advantage of my interest only mortgage. I always made payments to the student loans, even when in deferment. I have never had a creditor call. It is all just spending more than I am paying, and living beyond my means, along with a bit of bad luck.

Why now?

2009-12-20T00:09:00.004-05:00

Before I start getting into the nitty gritty of the spending and the budgets, I want to give some backstory into why I am motivated, how we got here, and the sacrifices that I have resolved to make this year.

First and foremost, I need to mention that I have an anxiety disorder and I am prone to panic attacks. This is important because it was ultimately a panic attack that got my butt in gear. I am not on medication or seeking therapy at this time. This is a battle I have fought my whole life, and my first memory of money involves what I realize now was a panic attack. I was probably around 8 years old at the time, so I am not kidding when I say that this is a lifelong battle. It also illustrates my unhealthy relationship with money. I was going to spend the night with a family friend's daughter, and I was excited about it. We were going to go to Toys R Us, and this was right after they had opened the first Toys R Us here, so it was a really big deal to go. I knew we were going, but for whatever reason I did not feel like I could ask my mother for money for shopping. I do not know or remember now why that was. I had a bag of coins, mostly pennies, in my room ( I never got an allowance - My mom usually just got us what we needed or gave us money when we were going out, which is what makes this story so strange, but I have always had a problem asking for money, and also accepting it, which has led to some bigger problems lately, but that is another story). I took this bag with me to Toys R Us and picked out some items there, mostly stickers as I remember. I was so stressed out the whole time because I couldn't just get what I wanted, I wasn't sure exactly how much I had, and I was embarrassed to have a bag of pennies. When I got to the checkout, I had to count out every penny and I was holding up the line. I hadn't known to expect the sales tax, and so I did not have the money to pay for the things I had picked out. I had to put some things back and count it all out all over again.

That night I couldn't sleep. I had a bad feeling towards the things I had gotten and had no enjoyment in using them. I was sick over using all my money. I was embarrassed by the experience. I didn't know when I would ever have any money again (keep in mind, this was maybe $5 in change we are talking about, but to an 8 year old....). I got myself worked up into such a state that the mother came up and I couldn't verbalize to her what was wrong. I think ultimately my mother had to come get me late at night.

I don't think I have ever told that story before. And I didn't really intend to now. But there it is.

Our circumstances have changed recently. I used to be a teacher. I reached a point where, for a lot of reasons I won't go into now, I needed to change careers. I told myself I would teach one more year, but in that year I need to find some other plan. I spent a lot of time soul searching, and suddenly decided to enroll in community college for an accounting program. I kinda feel like I pulled that out of the air, but it really has been the best thing so far. I, as I am finding so many do, assumed my whole life that accounting = taxes. It doesn't. MY JOB HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAXES. (I am getting kinda tired of people asking me if I am going to get real busy in January.) I became aware of this as our school bookkeeper suddenly got moved out of the reception office of our school, got her own office, and I started to pay attention to what she did, since I had always just assumed she enrolled and withdrew students, answered phones, and other secretarial duties. I also had to work with her on my program budgets and fundraising and so forth. For some reason, that simple act of her getting an office made her job seem so much more important and interesting.

When I started my accounting program, I knew relatively nothing about accounting. I had a pretty strong math foundation, and had originally been a computer science major in college (but dropped that). I stepped out on faith for probably the first time in my life, and so far it has worked out great. I found I really enjoyed the sort of anal, obsessive aspect of it. After teaching for nearly ten years and all the chaos that brought, I was ready for a quiet, controlled profession. I was the top of my class throughout my program, have a 4.0 GPA there, and finish next week. To do this, I had to sacrifice a lot of my time. I was going on maybe 5 hours of sleep throughout the school year. I left the house at 6:30 am and didn't return til 10 pm. I also took out what now feels like a really large student loan, however I told the school to return any excess (I need to check that they did) and I have been paying toward both my school loans the whole time.

I knew the economy was bad and that this was a huge risk. My last teaching paycheck came in September. I was terrified I wouldn't find another job, and even if I did, I knew it wouldn't pay anywhere near as well as teaching had. I was saving aggressively throughout that time, but when the market tanked and I lost most of the money in my Roth IRA, I dumped all of my savings into my Roth, hoping that it would pay off when the market came back. That's why I only have $2000 in savings now. I started looking for jobs in July and was so blessed because I ultimately got offered two jobs (one after I had already accepted the other). I started the job in October. (And I love it so far, but that's a whole different subject :)

Sometime after that, I started getting hooked on Suze Orman somehow. I am not sure why I happened to start watching her, but she has become my late-night Saturday laundry folding show. I don't always agree with everything she says, but she makes a lot of sense. I started to feel a sense of dread because she recommends an emergency savings of 8 months expenses. We don;t have even one, I think. I also knew our income was going way down because of the job change, and that we were going to have to address our spending at some point. What I finally realized in the midst of the panic attack I had at work the other day - where I came home and told my husband we both had to get weekend jobs and he refused and suggested I go back on medication - was that I have the tools now to look at our finances objectively. I know what an income statement is. I know what a budget is. I know how to balance things. This is what I do for my job now. Why can't I do it for my home? It is harder - because it is personal and it is really hard to look at what you have been spending and what you have been spending it on. When things have to be cut, it leads to squabbles. What I was shocked to find - as I will document here later - is that in October, we spent twice what we made, and I was able to come up with a (rather tight) budget that balances.

The numbers:

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What and who we owe (as of last statements):

Husband's credit card: 5205.76
My Credit card: 3509.91 (eek. I already know that is lots higher now)
Other credit card: $549.69
Best Buy: $300 - some odd dollars (we don't get paper statements. This is the remainder of my computer which must be paid off by June)
Carpet: $1542 - we have 12 months to pay this off

Total Credit card debt: 11107.36
This is the minimum debt I intend to have paid off by the end of the year.

Other Debts:
These debts I consider Long Term Liabilities, since they are intended to be paid out over time and we are on payment plans for them. Once we get to a point where the other debts are paid off and we are living on cash, I will reevaluate increasing our payments to these loans.

Student Loan 1: 10449 As of last statement. This may not include my final term loan and the return of overage money from the school.
Student Loan 2: 5011.84
Personal family loan: 16063.72 I think (I may be off a month or two)

Total loan debt: 31524.56

Total debt: 42601.92

Oh, and that doesn't include our mortgage, which is at about $260,000

Savings: (Not including retirement, because I haven't even looked into those numbers yet and they are fluctuating wildly.)

My savings: I just locked myself out of my account. Great. It's around $2000
Husband's Savings: 4227.61

Total Savings: around 6000
Emergency savings goal: min $32,000
Min Goal by 2011: $8000 + 6000= $14,000

I will discuss all of this in greater detail over time.

Why am I starting this blog?

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Total transparency. That is what they tell addicts and adulterers, isn't it? I am embarking on a journey to eliminate our debt and build our savings in the next year. The thing is, I know me. I have to be kept motivated and accountable, or this will be a forgotten resolution in two months time. Like the snuck cookie, I will buy things I don't need and not tell. Sometimes I spend money without even realizing it until the bill comes and I have to face what I bought. I have struggled with finances my whole life, my husband and I are both bad about managing our money and are instant gratification buyers. A lot of our debt is from unfortunate circumstances. A lot of it is our own fault. I will go into more detail in following posts.

I have started watching Suze Orman. I bought some of her books (on half.com for .75 cents+ shipping). I also watch the following program called "til Debt do us part". I have tried to make budgets in the past - I didn't know what I was doing, I have tried to pay down debt in the past, and there have been times when I have just told myself to "close my eyes and hand over the credit card". I have been very very poor, and I have been quite well off. I realized that now I have the tools to take an honest look at our money and our goals and develop plans and turn things around. It's the sticking to them that will be hard.

I plan to document our successes and failures here. I am going to lay it all out - how much we make, how much we spend, and how much we owe. I hope to celebrate the milestones and come here with my tail between my legs when I mess up, and resolve to get back on track. My mother would have a heart attack if she knew what I was planing to put out here in the cybernets for anyone to read. But, in doing research to convince myself to keep this blog, I have found that all kinds of people are doing the same thing. Some tell more details than others, and most owe a lot more than I do. Will anyone else read this than me? I don't know, and I don't really care. Maybe I will inspire someone. Maybe someone will inspire or encourage me. Ultimately, this is by me for me and I hope in a year I will read this and celebrate being on a new path.